Some advice for a returning player
Metabattle is slightly outdated. Sometimes it’s not exactly the best build, and sometimes it’s just best to stay away from the site if it’s having major issues.
Fractals, and crafting are no longer the primary way to obtain Ascended armor. This can now be done by doing raiding, doing WvW, doing sPVP, or just the old 2 ways. But these are new ways. I don’t know much about PvE section yet.
You should first complete the HoT storyline if you had not. This is so you opens up several collections that will award you ascended equipments as long as you fulfill the condition. This’ll greatly helps you in the long run.
Finally, my advice. Make sure you get a taxi onto a good PvE map if you are doing HoT meta, because most maps are going to be either dead, or are doing HP train. You don’t need to do Hero Points anymore if you’re a WvW’er by heart, because they provided an alternative way to get hero points by just exclusively doing WvW.
Now there you go! Hope you enjoy the game.
Thank you for your response!
Yeah I saw somethings in the chat about a HP run, had no idea what it was hehe. But that’s the best way to clear the maps fast I guess and farm points? I need some masteries first before joining such a run, so I’ll finish the story first.
Will I be okay in WvW with only exotic gear?
Will I be okay in WvW with only exotic gear?
Yes. You’ll be okay! Just note that it is major struggle to get yourself integrated, and comfortable with difficulties of understanding the gamemode! You’ll have to spend a bit of a time steadying some guides to understand whats to do!
But I hope you good luck on WvW.
There are 4 ways to get ascended gear. Crafting, Fractals, Raids, and Special Vendors. The difficulty of getting gear also varies heavily, because Ascended gear had to be haphazardly integrated into the game’s reward system following demands from players.
Understand right away that Ascended gear is a 5% increase in stats, but is a full order of magnitude more expensive/difficult to obtain a full set of. As a requirement, its only needed in High Level Fractals, specifically because it has Infusions slots that are needed to add Agony resistance to Armor. Outside of that- its preferable for Raids, but not an actual requirement. Some raid groups tend to be elitist about it, since its less DPS…… but the margin is so minor, that it won’t cause a competent group to fail because of it.
For the sake of efficiency, you want to prioritize Trinkets first, since they make up a larger total % of your gear bonuses. In Core Tyria, your options are somewhat limited, but not crippingly bad. Your first objective is an Amulet, which can be bought from the Laurel Vendor (only covers Core stats). Rings can also be bought with Laurels, but theres a more efficient way I’ll cover later. For Accessories (earring slot) you can get them with Guild Commendations from Guild missions plus 5 gold. This is way more preferable then spending 40 ectos, which is 15 gold, plus 40 laurels (which you only get 35 per month), and can be done in half the time. In core, back pieces have to be crafted or obtained from Fractal Vendors…… both are expensive prospects.
For rings, you want to get them from Fractals; obtained cheaply with Pristine Fractal Relics (costing 10 ea) from Daily rewards. You can get 3-4 a day on the lowest level fractals, which don’t require any Agony Resistance to do, and takes about 30-40 minutes with a half way competent PUG group. Theres a chaining behavior for higher tier rewards that’ll also give you the lower tier rewards at the same time; so later on when you’re capable of doing mid-tier fractals, that one 30-40 min run covers all your dailies.
Alternatively if you have access to Living story Season 3 chapters, you can get Ascended trinkets for tokens; which includes both Core and HoT stats. There should be a bundle sale for the whole season in the gem store, and I highly recommend getting it…. UNLESS you’re willing to wait until January to see if Living World S4 offers something similar for PoF stats. If you want to do this as cheaply as possible…. Get Crack in the Ice and Head of the Snake; as those 2 chapters have the easiest gathering options, and between the two has all 6 trinket items.
For Ascended Armor you have 3 options.
Crafting- which costs about 350-450g per set, requires you to level crafting (which can get a little expensive), and have access to Heart of Thorns map vendors (which you need masteries unlocked) and/or World vs World Provisioner if you want armor with HoT stats. This is the most straight forward way to get armor, but notably the most expensive in gold/materials.
Fractal Discount Armor- Obtained from a Fractal Vendor, this still requires you to max crafting level. However, the raw material cost is cheaper (roughly half), and supplemented through materials and tokens obtained from fractals.
Both WvW and PvP have a similar discounted armor set, but requires a lot of time be sunk into the game modes to gather the required rank and tickets to purchase.
Raids- Raid rewards give you tokens that can be used to buy Asc gear at a extreme discount (5-15g a piece + 150-400 shards), but takes a significant amount of time and effort gather due to rewards having a weekly reset (50 per wing, total of 200 per week). You can also get Trinkets and Weapons this way too.
There is also a 4th option if you’re new to Raids….. The Envoy Armor 1 collection produces a full set of stat selectable Armor of your choice, and needs full access to all the HOT maps, and do each Raid Wing (start to finish) at least once to get items and charge them. Gorseval has to be done at least 5 times because you need 5 of the item he drops, but doesn’t have to be in different weeks. If you fully know what you’re doing; realistically this can be done in under 2 weeks, as there are world events you have attend for collection items. The hardest part is doing the Raid wings….. PUG groups are really toxic, and most are only minimally competent or coordinated. You can Buy Raid kills, but those are really expensive, and runs the risk of scams. If at all possible, find someone in your Guild who raids a lot; They can help you get up to speed to participate, or might be able to set you up with a carry to get the collection done. Its a pain to do…. but its a Free set of armor.
However…. theres a catch 22 with Raid meta. For now, the DPS slots are favoring Condi builds. Condi builds require Vipers (a HoT stat). Due to the cost, and weight of expertise (condi duration) for DPS output, its considered wasteful to make an Exotic Viper set. So you need Vipers Asc to be a Condi DPS slot. DPS slots for Power builds can be viable, but are not optimal (thus generally shunned): However, Staff DareDevil ranks high on the list, and has a simple rotation; which should contribute enough in spite of being a sub optimal set up. Unforunately, no other power build comes even close to this…. so PUGs won’t even consider you.
But with the recent upset over condi getting their DPS capped due to external boosts (like food) getting changed, the Raid meta is in the middle of a shuffle. Depending on what gets figured out, there might be more easily doable options for novice raiders without the incredibly high upfront investment for gear.
Thank you Starlinvf, very nice and compehensive summary on how to get ascended armor. With the new expansion coming I’m wondering if it isn’t better to wait till the new ascended armor with new stats get released before I start to make my own set of ascended armor right now
There’s actually a fifth way to get some Ascended Gear: through stories and ‘quests’.