Guild Wars 2

hello! i recently hit 80 and i’m wondering what the best way to gear up is. i’m not really sure about what activities are available and what their rewards are.

You should go for exotic armor & weapons first. They are cheaper than ascended version so they are easy to get and you can experiment with them. Getting something wrong won’t gonna ruin you. For Amulet, Rings and Earing you should go strait for ascended since they are relatively cheap. Here are some ways you can get some of your first suff.

- Ascended Amulet : WvW vendor for laurel + badge of honor.
- Ascended Rings : Fractals
- Ascended Accessories : Guild Missions
- Exotic Backitem : Crafting, Guild vendor (no necessary, ascended back item can be costly, but they don,t give much stats. You can go without any back item until you can get your first ascended back item if you want)
- Exotic Armor and Weapons : I prefer buying them with dungeons token. Otherwise you can buy them off the TP for gold or craft them. You can also buy armor with karma or badge of honor but you can’t salvage them so be aware of that since you won’t be able to keep you runes if you switch gear.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

I’m also a new player, so here are my lessons learned.

Regarding the back item, crafted is the way to go unless you aim for ascended. The latter are enormously expensive to make – 250 Vials of Powerful Blood for the Quiver of Swift Flight for example. If you have most of LS season 2 unlocked apparently Mawdrey is a fairly doable ascended back, but I’m guessing you’d have to spend a few hundred gems to unlock the necessary episodes.

Anyway, chef is not too painful to get to 400, especially if you’ve done many of the hearts that let you get ingredients with karma. The reason not to get the guild exotic backpack is that for some reason the crafted exotic backs have much better stats despite only being level 78 instead of level 80. Even accounting for the lower tier gem in the upgrade slot the crafted back comes out ahead – it’s actually not far short of the ascended backs.

Armor – Temple of Grenth in Cursed Shore is by far the quickest and easiest way to get berserker armor (if you want other stats, see the wiki for which temple to aim for). You should have enough karma for at least two pieces when you hit 80, and if you do Tequatl you get a lot of karma each day. Definitely do dungeons too, but unless you’re in a very active guild and play at a very active time of day, temples will get you more armor pieces much faster. Also note that temple armor is the same price for every slot, while dungeon token armor is cheaper for the gloves, boots, shoulders, and helm. So start with temple chest and legs, and see what of the other four you can fill with CoF or CoE (I ended up with 4 temple pieces plus CoF gloves and CoE helm).

I never really understood the concern about not being able to salvage temple armor – as I see it the only reason one would want to is if you grind crafting to 500 and make yourself ascended armor. And if you can do that, buying a second set of armor runes is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of grinding crafting that much.

Weapon – should be your first priority to get to exotic quality. Either buy off the TP, or look at the mystic forge recipes if you can spare 50 skill points. Also be warned that many of the “pearl” line of weapons, which are the basic crafted level 80 exotics, look ridiculously bad. I don’t normally care much about item skins, but even I looked at the Pearl Broadsword and said “Nope! Mystic Claymore it is then!”

If your guild doesn’t do guild missions much, or doesn’t do all of them, these guys are fantastically helpful and a great way to ensure your 6 commendations/week:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/events/GW2-Community-Missions-Tequatl-Events/

Rare items are pretty cheap to get as placeholders when you’re just starting. It will take a total of four weeks to get both ascended accessories, and probably at least as long to get ascended rings (nominally 20 days, but good luck finding a low level fractal group every day). So rares in 2-4 of those slots make sense. If you want to punt on the back piece, the personal story will give you a level 80 rare back.

well thanks guys. i actually had found 2 exotic 80 weapons randomly while leveling, sold them, and bought one with proper stats for less. i was pretty into gw1 so i have 95% of the hall of monuments skins anyways. i didnt have much karma or laurels so ive really just got chest+legs and working on some dungeons. im actually starting to hate playing a melee class (guardian) in dungeons though =/. it seems like most bosses are much worse in melee range.

Oh you’ll get the hang of the bosses in no-time. I always like making sure I’m at the back of the boss when I’m on my guardian and meleeing, because usually the boss attacks/hits what’s in front of him. Try equipping scepter or even staff as secondary weapon so you can get some breathing room if things get too cozy every now and then.