Gear on a budget.
Why zerk/knight? Go full zerk. Would you rather spend all that money on some zerk/knight and then realise that you will eventually spend more money replacing them with zerk?
Flame legion runes set is the best replacement for the then ruby orbs alternative.
For fractals, superior strength runes are better than scholar’s (and the price shows… unfortunately).
Some problems with the rune of the ogre: the rock dog that is randomly summoned when you do dungeons can screw up the stacking.
I would recommend going full berserker over a split or even full assassin’s these days – when assassin’s is better than berserker’s, its increase is minimal; but when berserker’s is better than assassin’s, it’s better by a few %. Berserker’s/Knight’s should only be used while learning – then move toward full DPS equipment as you start learning fights.
Why do the Berserker’s parts cost too much? You can easily get Berserker’s armor from doing normal dungeons – CoF, CoE, and Arah specifically. Arah can be pretty challenging, but CoF path 1 is very easy, and CoE 1 and 3 are also popular. Trade those tokens in for exotic (orange) armor – specifically for parts that are expensive to buy on the TP. The dungeon token vendors are on the east side of LA near the crafting stations. When searching on the TP don’t forget to search for Zhed’s set as well as the crafted sets.
For runes, obviously Strength (LH) and Scholar (Staff) are your best choices. Less optimal choices include Runes of the Flame Legion as long as you’re often using the Burning Precision trait, Runes of Hoelbrak, and maybe even Runes of Rage or Runes of Water (though Water is the most defensive). I haven’t run numbers for DPS/EP on those set because I’ve been working on a few projects with guildmates, but it’s on the list of things to look at.
For weapons and sigils, exotic weapons shouldn’t be that expensive but you can also use dungeon tokens to buy them. Obviously work on getting the weapon set you use most often, but having the others ones in your bag can be useful (such as pulling out a staff to stack swiftness before a long run). For sigils, Sigils of Force and Strength should probably be your first two for staff or MH dagger builds, but Force and Battle is a little better for scepter+LH (if you even need the extra might from a sigil – if not Frailty instead of Battle is fine). I know Force is pretty expensive – I guess Strength/Frailty until you can afford a Force? Stacking sigils have been nerfed to the point where they’re no longer efficient to run in dungeons, so I wouldn’t bother with any of them.
Note that there is a Sigil of Night which is an excellent sigil to have when you start diversifying your weapon collection. It’s a higher damage modifier that only works at night – I’m not recommending it as one of your first sigils because it’s a little expensive and it doesn’t work in most fractals. For night time instances, the highest DPS sigil combo (short of stacking) for high direct damage builds is Night/Force.
Meanwhile, you’ll also want to work on getting Tailoring, Artificing, and maybe even Weaponsmithing to crafting level 500 so that you can create Ascended (pink) equipment while doing some world bosses to get Dragonite. The Orrian temples as well as Dragons and Jungle Wurm all give a good amount of Dragonite when successful.
For trinkets, get Mark of the Tethyos Houses as your necklace from the PvE or WvW Laurel Merchants. You’ll want one each of Althea’s Ashes and Magister’s Field Journal, which you get from the guild commendation vendor (you can earn commendations from guild missions once per week). If you don’t get them as drops, get a Ring of Red Death and Crystalline Band as your rings. Since all ascended equipment is account bound and since Berserker’s trinkets are part of the PvE meta for almost all classes, you can move these around if you want to play another character.
(edited by DEKeyzToChaos.7381)
Oh wow thanks :O I’ll switch to full zerk then.