Guild Wars 2

So I’m gonna reach level 80 soon, and I’ve been trying to decide which exotic set to plop my gold down for. What stats should I focus on? This is for mainly PvE with some WvW.

Right now I have the valkyrie set stat spread – sort of going for a tanky direct damage build w/ some precision. I’m considering the carrion, knight, valkyrie, and soldier (where can I find this, by the way?) sets. But then when you take into consideration runes, sigils, and traits it just gets really confusing. Any suggestions? What are you guys running on your eles?

Thanks in advance.

I am in a similar boat – hitting 80 very soon and trying to figure out my exotic set. I am doing some PvE with my friends but most of the time I end up staying in WvW. I play Staff with the following build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEUQFAWhImibyx5gjDAkHn4CLhCKUeMzO2A Personally I am shooting for Power/Precision/Toughness as I will have sufficient amount of healing from comboing various abilities together to offset low VItality.

I went for Power, Precision, Vitality and Toughness:

• exotic Valkyrie armor
• masterwork Knight jewelry
• exotic Berserker weapons

Feels nice in mostly open world PvE and occasional WvW. With a build like: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mcs9wGaaxcRcVVRq
I often swap arcane traits together with weapons between Staff, Scepter/Dagger and Dagger/Dagger.
I don’t really utilize 20 in Air very well in practice, but as I don’t do many dungeons for now I don’t really need to respec. Otherwise I would invest those points rather in Water.

For a first set I’d go with pow/pre/tough (knights set). This gives you a decent baseline with room for error.

Once you’re settled, grab your berserk or rampage sets.

Carrion insignia is interesting if you want an offensive build that does not rely on criticals. Power/ Condition damage/ Vitality. Speccing into earth for more condition damage and toughness, and you have decent defense, good damage, and excellent condition damage. Great for Scepter/ MH Dagger + OH Dagger, but I’m not sure if I would recommend that for Staff.

My d/d set up is all about carrion. Some people suggest condition dmg is crap, but I love it. It’s mostly up to your preference.

But, just know, that all these gear answers will change with what skills you enjoy to use. Carrion is awesome if you almost always have a burn/bleed on the target. Knight is nice. It’s almost required to have some sort of defensive stat so you don’t feel all squishy. If you like being squishy, then go all out Zerker. TBH, there is no “wrong” answer with your gearing. Just be smart and work within your skill sets and play style. You’ll do lots of damage with all of them.

For your first set? Get either vit or toughess. Unless you trait 30 earth 30 water, you’re going to get owned in 5 seconds.

Ive got a mix of knights and Valkyries crafted, so 50/50 toughness/vit and lots of pwoer and crit and crit damage. I also built 20/10/30/0/10.

Condition damage is strong enough to be meta in PvP, elementalists’ burst damage is rather underpowered while their condition damage is fine, and condition damage allows you to keep killing foes while you’re spending your time on defensive attunements. It’s certainly better than people give credit for.