Guild Wars 2

I am quite new to gw2 and am currently lvl 25 ele.
My question is if I should get/craft new gear or should I try to go lvl 80 before taking care of this?

Unfortunately so far I played most of the time solo and some advanced areas start to become quite difficult with the gear I have now (which is essentially composed of loot and rewards for personal story)

Sticking with your first gear will make the game a lot more difficult.. Don’t bother getting rare/exotic items, though. The masterwork (green) items are good enough until you hit level 80 and they are quite affordable.

I usually get new gear about every 5 levels, by buying it, crafting it myself or using what I find. To buy them, either have a look at the trading post (press o) or visit some NPCs ingame. Also after you completed a renown heart (symbolized by a yellow heart on the map), the NPC will turn into a vendor. Many of them offer decent gear in exchange for karma. You also get useful items by progressing your personal story.

I would add that you should probably stagger your upgrades at lower levels since gold is hard to earn at first (everything scales so what you earn at level 25 by doing an event jumps with your level as you do that event again). Upgrade your entire set now if your gear is not level 25.

Then, around 30, add an entire set of trinkets (amulet, 2 rings, 2 earrings and a back piece). At 35, swap out your armor and weapons. 40, your trinkets again.

If you stay with green items (mastercraft), most everything will be 2 silver or less, the trinkets may be a touch more, this also scales with level.

On a side note, this is about the point where you want to start thinking about crafting some of the things you need, like armor. Pick your crafting disciplines to support your character’s class. If you are a warrior, be an armorsmith and a jeweler OR weaponsmith. A mesmer, a tailor and a jeweler OR an artificer. You get the point.

Thanks for the advices, I already started to look into Crafting, but so far the armor that came out was way lower than what I was already wearing.
I will check out the Karma vendors, seems to be a good hint.

I upgraded my weapon and trinks along the way, but I stayed in cultural stuff until I could use the next tier. Yep, idk.

You can probably coast by on just upgrading your gear whenever a better piece drops until level 80. If you are unlucky and find yourself really lagging behind maybe consider it every 20 levels or so otherwise, and just buy it cheap off the trading post. No reason to really stress over it until 80.

For leveling get stuff with power in it to kill faster to level faster. =)

I echo the suggestions of upgrading yourself with Masterwork gear till you reach 80, although I’d only do it every 10 levels or so. When you reach that point, buy level 80 Exotics, or level 80 Rares if you’re really strapped for cash. Those will allow you to do just about any content in the game without issues.

Crafting your own gear is fun, but it’s also incredibly expensive, so it should be something you do only if you enjoy crafting. (Although, it’s worth noting that Ascended armor and weapons can only be acquired through crafting, or very, very rare drops, so if you like working for Best-in-Slot equipment, then advancing crafting is something you should work on while levelling.)

I usually stick with masterwork gear/ karma gear until level 35
and then I buy cultural gear t1
that lasts me until lvl 60 when I buy cultural lvl 2
at 80 I just buy exotics

It is very advisable to buy gear to help when leveling up. The kind of gear depends a lot on your method of leveling and the class.

An ele is very squishy. It can be build to be very tanky, but not at low level. You often need grandmaster traits for that.
For the ele I would recommend to get new armor every 10 levels. when you can get masterwork/rare. Never go for exotic before level 80.

This what I do when leveling.

Level 1 – 62
I use whatever masterwork items drop that are better than current.
Do not buy anything, save your gold cos you will need it later.
Do not craft anything for personal use, this is a waste of expensive mats, only craft items that generate a profit or at least break even.
Do not buy cosmetic items such as cultural, this is a major waste of gold while leveling .

Level 62 – 70 something.
Lvl 62 is when the 3 stat items appear, and you want these.
Buy a full set of BLUE (Fine) armour and weapons from the trading post. These items cost coppers. Use these for 10 levels or so (upgrading with any drops). At level 70-something, buy another full set of BLUE (Fine) armour and weapons. Again, these cost coppers and will do you until you hit lvl 80.

Level 80
Now you can spend your saved gold on a full set of exotic armour, buy it off the trading post. Do not pay listed price, place buy orders. If you have some gold left over, then place orders for whatever exotic weapons you can afford.
Again do not buy cosmetic or cultural items. wait until you have done enough game content to afford it.

You can do map completion on the cities, that alone is about 7~8 levels worth of exp.
Then do map completion of the 5 starting maps, that coupled with mobs, nodes and events will give you a ton of levels depending on how you play.
Remember you can do this starting at level 1 and only gearing at level 15 and stick with that gear, by the time all the cities and starting areas are mapped you should be somewhere between 35~50.
Gear up again and map the areas at your level or below, before you get all areas under 50 mapped you’ll be level 80, and because you’ve been selling all the loot and mats you’ve collected along the way and not spending money on anything you’ll have enough saved up for Exotic armor from the trading post.
You can start doing dungeons so for your next toons you’ll have tokens to buy their gear.

I never bought any equipment for my main character until she got to level 80, I just used what dropped from enemies and was given as story rewards. I’m doing the same with my other characters as well.

I think at most I had one piece that was 10 levels behind, most things I was able to replace relatively regularly. The main issue is that you can’t be picky about the stats so sometimes your attributes will be all over the place.

On the plus side it meant that as soon as I got to level 80 I was able to go and get a full set of exotic armor from the temples in Orr because I’d saved up all my karma.

Yes you should but only dirt cheap stuff.

I bought new cheap blue/green gear off the Trading Post at lvl 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 70.

Make sure you fully equip yourself full, armour, weapons, runes, sigils, trinkets, fill trinket slots. Use food + spanner buffs all the time. Spend all your trait pts.

Do this and you will virtually never die, also you can push to fight foes 5+ lvls above your level. Also, be reasonably competitive in WvW if you go in there.

The easiest/cheapest way to get reasonable gear is to visit the karma trader at the back of the hall in your WvW borderland’s Citadel. He’standing next to the laurel vendor.

(You should already have a huge quantity of otherwise useless karma.)

I advise you to look at prices, frequently identical armor sets can have wildly different prices. For example, a level 20 (masterwork) mighty chain coat sells for 11 silver. a level 20 (masterwork) mighty worn scale coat of infiltration sells for 3 silver. (same stats + a rune).

Exactly what Meglobob suggested. most of the gear u can buy off the tp are really dirt cheap if u know how to look. Gear up every 10 levels or so, don’t look for rares/exos because those are excessively costly imo when u can get similar stats on blues/greens for waay less. Say you’re about to hit lv60. what I’d do is filter lvl range by lv58-60, masterworks only, and then sort by ascending price (lowest 1st). u will find that it is indeed ‘dirt cheap’. I just wish they could let u sort by armor type (heavy, med etc.) as well.