Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

I’m almost level 80 and have some questions I’m still trying to answer. Overall, my plan is to focus mostly on WvW, with PvE being mainly a focus to work on my gear. From what I understand, gear plays a big part in WvW, but once you have a solid set of exotics you should be good.

My plan on gear progression was to first grab some cheap, green level 80 gear (budget <30 silver so cheap stuff). From there, I would aim to obtain a full set of exotic armor, with the intention of replacing pieces with Ascended items overtime. After a few months, my goal is to have full Ascended armor through purchases and crafting.

This brings me to my questions below:

Karma – I read somewhere a long time ago it was important to save up your Karma for level 80 gear. So I haven’t spent any, now totaling around 180K. Can I buy gear (such as exotics) directly with Karma? Or is it better to use this for something else (such as legendary items, runes, upgrades?).

Laurels – I have also been saving these. I believe I saw that you can buy Ascended armor with these. Is that correct? Is there a better use for these?

Gold – I’ve also collected around 25 gold. While not much, I want to make sure I get the most use out of it. I was planning to use this, coupled with all the various materials found while leveling, and work on crafting (Armor/Jewelcrafting).

Thanks for the help!

With 25 gold you can easily buy a full exotic armor set from the trading post.

Don’t buy Karma/WvW Badge gear if you want to use expensive sigils, because that gear cant be salvaged and your sigils will be lost if you decide you want gear with different stats.

Laurels can be used to buy ascended accessories, if you play WvW though, you better buy them at the laurel vendor there in combination with badges, it’s much cheaper..

That said, with 25 gold you dont even need to think about replacing your exotic armor with ascended armor. You will need much, much more than that

I’d suggest buying or crafting rare (yellow) quality armor/trinkets, and exotic weapons at first.

2 reasons:

1) You may desire to change your build at some point, after you gain more experience in WvW.

2) Rare gear can be salvaged for ectoplasm to recover some/all of the cost, once you save more gold. Exotic weapons are often cheaper than armor and you only need a few at first.

I wouldn’t bother with jewelcrafting, pick another craft that benefits your profession. The reason is Ascended jewelery isn’t currently craftable, and it’s easily available (albeit time gated through laurels/guild missions). Jewelcrafting as a craft is mainly good for leveling EXP currently and you’re already 80.

Dungeons are a good way to get gear, assuming you can stand them. AC/SE/HotW for soldier’s stat gear (warrior/guardian frontline mainly, but good for survival on any class while learning) or CoF/CoE for berzerker gear (not recommended for zerg fighting, especially for beginners, but a few pieces can boost damage).

Definitely look at dungeons for equipment. A full set of armour takes 24 runs. Sorrows Embrace p1&3 take less than half an hour together, so if you do those two dungeons once a day you will have a full set of exotic in 12 days, plus close to 30 gold. Just let people know that you are new, and avoid groups that specifically ask for experienced people when you start.

You will probably want to change the runes though.

OK. First of all:

1) Exotic weapons and armor can be bought in WvW for 1 gold + badges if you have any badges.

2) WvW vendors also sell rare armor and weapons for Karma, but NOT trinkets. So, I usually buy exotic trinkets on the Trading Post if I’m strapped for cash, and go for rare armor and weapons.

3) If you are strapped for cash, you might want to consider getting a really cheap armor off the Trading Post, such as Cleric’s which was about 1 gold when I bought it. Having a full set of exotic armor and weapons will make you stronger than having a couple of exotic pieces with your preferred stat and the rest of your gear being stuck as Masterwork and Rare.

4) As someone else already mentioned, the equipment sold by WvW vendors cannot be salvaged. So, if you don’t want to waste your money then just buy some really cheap runes and sigils to put in them. There are some runes and sigils on the trading post that are pretty useful that you can get for very cheap. They won’t give you the “max deeps” but they will increase your effectiveness by a lot. If you put expensive runes and sigils in the vendor gear, you will eventually have to trash them and you will never be able to get them out. So, putting runes in there that cost six gold pieces is a complete waste, especially if you eventually intend to replace your armor and weapons with ascended. Always put runes in there that cost a few silver and not a few GOLD.

5) All ascended trinkets can be bought for laurels (+ ectoplasm for earrings) and if you plan to WvW you might want to get the inscriptions from the WvW vendor which adds five to a stat and increased/reduced damage to/from WvW guards. With full inscriptions, that’s 3% reduced damage from guards and 2% increased damage to guards.

Asc Accessories are cheaper if you get in a Guild and do weekly missions for the commendations. 50 ectos is +20g.

No-one has mention that exotic items can be bought with Karma but only in Orr has the Level 80 exotics from my understanding.

Use this link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rubicon_Shoulderpads#item2

The type of gear will depend on your class and build.

In addition to all the usefull and true tips on exotic armor, I would like to tell you that getting your goal of getting Ascended armor will be very steep. It will take tremenedous amounts of gold and time, and the overall increase, if you have everything ascended is only about 5%, which isn’t that noticeable. I crafted one piece of light ascended armor, it took me one month, I wont try with the rest of my armor.

Loki.8034:

No-one has mention that exotic items can be bought with Karma but only in Orr has the Level 80 exotics from my understanding.

Use this link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rubicon_Shoulderpads#item2

The type of gear will depend on your class and build.

It was mentioned, but it’s recommended not doing this because you can’t salvage the items. I have a few Bloodlust and Perception Sigils stuck in a few weapons from before the patch that made this a thing.

Start doing dungeons, world bosses and crafting. The world bosses drop rares, which you can either use or salvage for the ecto’s you will need for crafting. Save your gold and karma for now.

Start playing wvw even though you do not have ideal gear. Ask in map chat if there is a group that will show you the ropes. If not, try to find a commander leading a pug and tag along with them.