Guild Wars 2

Hi. I’m coming back from a long hiatus.
I started playing when GW2 first came out, got all my exotics, did some WvW, then got too busy with real world stuff.
Not I’m back and looking to get back into WvW and maybe try some new content.

So my question is, where is everyone with their armor these days in WvW?
Usually when I come back to a game after a long break, the game population has passed me by and my gear is hopelessly outdated.
Do I need to upgrade to ascended or legendary. Or are exotics still acceptable in WvW?

Thanks!

You’ll be fine in exotics. Full ascended is about a 10% stat increase from exotics, so you may want to start working towards them, but it’s not mandatory. Legendary weapons have no stat advantage over ascended.

If you want to go for some ascended gear go for trinkets – rings, amulets, earrings. You can get them from the laurel venders if you have laurels and gold. Do not get 2 of the exact same kind of trinket for the same character.

Then getting ascended weapons is better than getting ascended armor.

The game is balanced to be played with exotic-level gear. Ascended gear gives a fairly minor stat increase, but is more important in high level fractals where you will need agony resistance to survive (ascended gear has special slots to add these agony infusions in). In other words, it isn’t necessary to get ascended gear in any way, shape or form.

Ascended rings and amulets are pretty easy to get providing you complete daily and monthly achievements regularly- these will give you laurels which you can exchange for relatively cheap trinkets. I also recommend completing guild missions every week to be rewarded with Guild Commendations, which can be traded in for cheap ascended accessories/earrings.

Ascended weapons are more difficult to get at they require you to spend about 100g to increase your weapon crafting level from 400 to 500. The weapon itself requires a fair amount of material to create (and laurels), but the materials can be relatively easy to come across with a bit of map exploration and completion. The weapon skins look pretty good according to most people.

Ascended armour, however, is a whole different ball park. Getting to 500 tailor/leatherworker/armorsmith is the easy part, collecting all the materials or saving up money is the hard part. I haven’t done the maths in a while, but I’d estimate it to cost around 700g for ascended light armour (but cheaper for ascended medium and heavy). The armour skins aren’t really anything special, by most people’s judgements.

It’s endgame though, to some respects. Even if you don’t do fractals (or wouldn’t need the agony resistance slots) it’s something to work towards and enjoy the satisfaction of completing.

As for legendary weapons, they have the same stats as ascended gear, with interesting skins and on-the-fly stat changes whenever you’re out of combat. I don’t know many people who craft legendaries for the stat changes though, considering most builds run zerker gear anyway, but for many people crafting a legendary is exciting and gives a nice sense of completion.

It costs approximately 1100G to get a full set of light, medium and heavy ascended berserker armor assuming you made all the timegated materials yourself, rather than outright buying the Damask. And this does not include the costs of training the relevant three disciplines to 500. Light is especially expensive, almost double the price of Medium ascended armor.

If using a condition build your direct damage will consist only about 1/11 of your total damage output, so the 6% (175%/165%) increase of that represented by the ascended tier increase relative to exotic is going to be a sad, sad percentage you won’t see (0.48% extra DPS to be precise). Also, for Engineers specifically, kit damage is not increased by having an Ascended weapon. In those cases, build your armor first.

In all other cases, build your weapon first as the mileage you get out of the stat increase is far greater. Most players skip ascended armor entirely for classes like the Warrior which already have a lot of toughness. Full ascended armor in addition to the weapon is only really important for the interrupt-full glass thief build, as its base defense is so pathetic that every little addition to toughness helps.

Finally, the stat difference for all this investment is miniscule in comparison to the effect from food buffs you can get for a couple of coppers at cheapest, silvers for somewhat better buffs. If you fight in Ascended and you don’t use a food buff, you’d have spent in the order of thousands of times more than someone else for less than half the bonus.

Exotics + dungeon potions/skale venom + cheap food are more than good enough for pretty much everything in the game. Ascendeds in non-fractal content are really more the place of people trying to break speed limits or carry dungeons…. or players who have nothing else left to spend gold on.

Apart from Ascended equipment (which was introduced over the course of 2013), Guild Wars 2 is not expected to have a “gear treadmill”. This means that your Exotic equipment should always remain viable.

As mentioned before, Ascended equipment is only slightly better than Exotic. (Actually, the difference is closer to 5%, not 10%.)

One thing ArenaNet does do, however, is to create more options. The number of combinations of stats on equipment is gradually increasing. (For example, the recent updates added the Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power set to the game.)

Also, bear in mind that “Critical Damage %” has been replaced with “Ferocity” in April 2014. Ferocity does the same thing it, but uses a slightly different formula to calculate your critical damage bonus.

If you have full exotics you will be just fine. The vast majority of players have Exotic gear. Ascended weapons are useful to pursue in WvW. Ascended armor, not as much. The stat difference is negligible. The 10% figure being tossed around is inaccurate, and doesn’t really take into consideration the reality of most level 80 characters having full Exotic armor and weapons but with Ascended trinkets.

The real % difference between someone in FULL Ascended gear and someone in Exotic + Ascended trinkets is in the 3-5% range.

Ascended trinkets will come with time (through laurels). Ascended weapons you will need to craft.

Ascended armor I honestly wouldn’t even bother unless you plan on doing FoTM30+

And even then. A good player in full Exotic will win 100% of the time against a bad player in full Ascended. Skill > the stat boost. That’s a fact.

Ascended is not needed but the Jewelry is available via various currencies and end game activities, so they should not cost you lots of gold

Ascended weapons are a worthy end game goal (maybe not if you have not crafted at all).

Ascended Armor is very questionable if it is worth the effort and cost for the stat increase, but if you are looking at a single character and have the materials already available (and a gold surplus), it’s a viable (quite expensive) upgrade option.

WvW is less about equipment than it is

1. In balanced face to face meetings, Player skill and knowledge usually win.
2. Numbers usually win in uneven encounters.
3. Surprise attacks can trump the above.

Just to clarify since there seems to be quite a bit of confusion on this topic:

Ascended gear is 175% normal stat. Exotic gear is 165% normal stat.

The reason why people state ‘10%’ is because of this arithmetic difference, but this is relative to white equipment. What is more relevant to more people is what the difference between ascended and exotic is. That’s 175/165 = 1.06 = +6% more stats.

Ascended weapons give +6% more base damage and +6% stats from the weapons.
Ascended trinkets give +6% stats from the trinkets.
Ascended armor gives +6% more defense and +6% stats from the armor.

When you have ‘full’ ascended versus ‘full’ exotic (only applicable for certain stat combinations), you have +6% more base damage, +6% more stats and +6% more defense.

Having, say, only an ascended weapon means that you’ll only have +2% more base stats or so, and +6% more base damage. The reason why this is recommended for most builds is because most builds deal direct damage based on power.

Hayashi.3416:

Ascended weapons give +6% more base damage and +6% stats from the weapons.
Ascended trinkets give +6% stats from the trinkets.
Ascended armor gives +6% more defense and +6% stats from the armor.

Having, say, only an ascended weapon means that you’ll only have +2% more base stats or so, and +6% more base damage. The reason why this is recommended for most builds is because most builds deal direct damage based on power.

Also .. the higher base damage on weapons and base armor on armor is only applied
when you are fighting at level 80 .. if mentored down level 79 or below they have
the same base damage / armor than exotic items.

So if you do for example Ascalon or CoF with an ascended Sword you do something
like 0,4% more damage because of the slightly better stats.