Guild Wars 2

I noticed that there are 2 versions on the tier 2 wvw armor, exotic and ascended. Do I have to make the ascended version to unlock the last tier or will exotic do?

You need to unlock the skin, and either of them will unlock that for you.

You can buy the exotic, it will unlock the tier 3 for you.

If you get the exotic version it will save you the crafting tokens and still unlock the t3.