Guild Wars 2

First I am relatively new to the game, I know I am still learning the profession as well as the game. I only have one 80, and it is my beloved ele. I am still working on her personal story. I am not new to MMOs, i have a long love/hate relationship with WoW, and over the years have played most of the bigger titles. Then in November I started playing guild wars. So yes, although I have been playing almost daily since november, i still consider myself new. I have never been one to fly through leveling to get to end game. I enjoy the ride. Grinding… ugh… not my thing. The only reason I think I made it to 80 already is because the scaling feature.

I like to do everything. I enjoy pve- my story, jumping puzzles, fractals, world bosses…, i enjoy ebg making peoples walls suddenly not so safe as i rain firey presents down upon thier annoying arrowcarts they mistakenly placed too close to my range. I even enjoy an occasional roaming/havoc. I have not tried dungeons yet, but that is something I plan on doing soon.

I have gotten pretty good at changing my build for the situation, i run mainly staff air/fire/arcane, although ill swap arcane for water if the group needs it. Im not interested in healing but I know sometimes its needed and have no problem swapping and helping out. I mainly did healing in Wow but here, im enjoying breathing fire in someones face. Its very rewarding lol.

What I am having problems with is choosing gear. When I have asked others in the past I get vague responses like “full zerk”. As helpful as that would be to someone who has been playing for the last few years, that doesnt help me in the least when bezerker isnt an option for what i am choosing. Or my fave “power precision ferocity” ok, so this gear this vendor has has all of those.. ill get that. Nope. Wrong gear apparently. So now I am running in gear that isnt right, and I cant for the life of me figure out what i do need. I am working on my tailoring so at some point I can get ascended but until then I need something other than the soldiers gear I thought would be fine and isnt. This is the one major thing I cannot seem to figure out with this game. I am a little too used to wow in this area, main stat intellect and im good. Here… not so much. Not that I dont trust who I have asked in the past, but thier advice was vague so I figure asking here I may get a straight answer.

So my actual questions, am I going to need multiple sets for all the different game types I enjoy? Or is there one set to rule them all? Id like to get this settled before I get to the point I can make ascended anything, so I dont make the wrong thing. Right now I have Soldiers gear. Im managing but not as well as i know i can. I like my ebgs but if i get stuck one arrow cart can basically take me down. Also my personal story has gotten very difficult to get through. Ive been dying repeatedly before finally passing basically every part. Some of this i know is mechanics, i do figure out what is going to get me past it event but I feel like my lack of gear is a contributing factor. Back to the original questions, what gear would help me best, do i need multiple sets, if so what or can i get by with one set? Thank you in advance, I appreciate it alot :-)

Also, any suggestions on another profession I may enjoy long term? I have tried most of them but none have peaked my interest as much as ele. This would just be another character, hopefully one i can use in the same capacity as my ele, across multiple game types.

To get exotic berserker gear just buy it off of the trading post, it is cheaper than leveling tailoring your self.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zhed%27s_armor or Berserker’s Exalted pieces are going to be the ones you want. Will cost about 30-40 gold for all 6 pieces which isn’t too bad. Don’t worry about ascended armor for a while, it will take some time.

This will work well for everything in pve but it is very glassy so if you have trouble surviving you can use soldiers or knights jewelry which has some toughness and vitality. The extra survivability is especially useful in wvw where everything is a little more dangerous.

For leveling, you’ll be surprised, but Cleric gear is the best. You will be able to solo all stories and open world with it, especially if you use D/D. It’s also usually very cheap.

The only other set you need is Berzerker. This is required for high level PvE content.

If you only want to carry only one set of armor. I strongly recommend Celestial. It can do anything you want, including WvW. Obviously, it’s not the best of anything, but it’s the most well-rounded set.

Here is the list of the common armor stats by name:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats

For pretty much any PvE content Berserker is the go to. In HoT you may want to add some soldier’s trinkets, but weapon and armor remain berserk.
- You can easily get exotic berserker weapons and armor from farming the Citadel of Flames dungeon. Path 1 and 2 are so easy, that most groups don’t even realise that you’re not pulling your own weight, or just don’t mind. At least the only reason I’m looking for a group there is because of the cheesy 5 person requirement at p1. Once you’ve got enough tokens get your equip from the dungeon vendor in LA. He offers different stat combinations of different armor classes for the same tokens in the same tab. The buy-tab is a giant mess of armor pieces, so pay extra attention that you’re buying the right thing.
- Buy an ascended amulet in WvW at the laurel vendor. It costs less laurels than in LA and burns some unneeded badges of honor.
- Play some low lvl fractals for pristine fractal relicts and buy ascended rings. !!!Attention!!! Don’t buy the exact same ring twice! You won’t be able to equip it!
- Do some guild missions and buy ascended accessories from the guild token vendor. Again, don’t buy the exact same accessory twice!
- Play some more fractals and get the exotic backpack. After playing even more fractals you can turn it into an ascended backpack.

In WvW the choice of gear depends heavily on how you play WvW. I like running with the zerg and manage to stay quite safe in the backline, so running full berserker’s is possible. As for roaming or more duel based equip I got no experience. I won some duels using celestial gear, but that was years ago.

I just always recommend using soldier’s as your staple armor and zerker’s for weapons and trinkets.

Zerkers is all you need isn’t an entirely true statement for elementalist. One, how much vitality and toughness you need is in relation to your knowledge and experience of PvE. Mob AI is incredibly simplistic and all mechanics have some way to be countered. As you get better at mastering this, the need for more suriviability over more DPS becomes less crucial.

HoT changed this to some extent. They didn’t really improve the mobs AI, but rather made it so a lot of stuff does absurd amounts of damage. To participate in group open world content in HoT, you still need some amount of vitality and toughness so you can survive a one-shot from a scaled champion. If you have enough to do that, it’s all you need, because if you disengage from combat, the champion will switch to another player in range and leave you alone. This allows you to heal up and most likely go untouched for the rest of the fight.

Acquiring the gear is very simple as long as you stay within the stat prefixes released at the start of the game (this includes Soldiers and Zerkers). These stat prefixes were implemented with multiple ways to acquire them, allowing you to acquire them within a couple days. Other stat prefixes were released in other content patches and are much harder to acquire.

Save up all your karma when leveling and then spend it at these merchants to acquire your first set of gear. Don’t worry if you blow it all; what you can spend karma on is limited and you will always have a surplus, because its so easy to acquire.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor

The best time to get to these merchants is about a hour after daily rest. Most of the World Boss Trains will have cleared the temples and unlocked the merchants, increasing your odds of landing in such in a map.

Another way is WvW tokens. You used to be able to run EotM maps for tons of WvW tokens and karmas. There was trains that did nothing but base trade to farm the map. Not sure if HoT did anything to ruin that. You can use WvW tokens to buy Zerkers and Soldiers in the Borderlands.

A third option is running Citadel of Flame dungeon for tokens for Zerkers and Sorrow’s Embrace for tokens for Soldiers. However, since the dungeon reward nerf, finding groups for these dungeons is hard.

If you don’t have enough currency and want to buy it off the market, spend your currency on zerkers then buy the soldier’s peices off the market. They are considerably cheaper than buying zerkers for gold.

Ok so im gathering zerkers is what I would do better with, but my soldiers set isnt as bad as I was told. Well thats good. I have already purchased an Ascended Amulet, and one ring, which I should have enough in the next day or so for a second ring. Ok well, looks like I will go get some Zerker gear and supplement it with some of my soldiers.

Thank you everyone, I appreciate the responses :-)

Just don’t try to join a raid with soldier’s gear, or you’ll likely be kicked
other than that it’s good (just don’t run full soldier’s or your damage will be trash)

Also, it takes more effort to acquire, but marauder’s gear is better than combining zerker’s and soldier’s

reikken.4961:

Also, it takes more effort to acquire, but marauder’s gear is better than combining zerker’s and soldier’s

This is a true statement. I just don’t harp on it much when people ask these type of questions, because it’s not very accessible.

Building a gear set out of Soldier’s and Zerker’s or any of the original stat prefixes is considerably easier than trying to build a set out of purely Marauders. It’s a better for a first character to do that, then work on a Marauder’s set slowly.

Maurader’s gives you a higher stat total per peice and the precision to power ratio is more balanced than Zerker’s. If you min max correctly, you get something like 4k extra health for marginal offensive stat loss when comparing full Zerker to Marauders.

I read on another post about marauders, but it was quite old so I wasnt sure if that was still true. I dont mind having to work towards a set of gear. I am going to go look into that now :-)

witchtorious.9362:

I read on another post about marauders, but it was quite old so I wasnt sure if that was still true. I dont mind having to work towards a set of gear. I am going to go look into that now :-)

There is two identical stat prefixes, Berserkers + Valkyries which you can get off some Ascended and Marauders which was added to PvE in HoT.

Berserkers + Valkyries is just a minor trade off in one of the offensive stats for a little bit more vitality. It’s not the same.

Marauders in HoT has to be crafted and you can’t get ascended rings or earrings. You can get an ascended amulet, but you have to complete the HoT story achievements.

air/fire/tempest is awful for general pve. only good for raids and speed clears of dungeons and mid-low fractals. In anything remotely difficult, you have to play super cautiously because you have no condition clear etc. Air/water/tempest gives you way more sustain and condi clear, and water has a damage multiplier as well, so you don’t even lose much damage.

Fortunately traits are easily swapped at any time.
I run fire/air for speed clears and raids (though I often end up swapping to air/water due to dps being fine but people dying), but for general roaming around or harder fractals—or just having an inexperienced group—air/water is the best. Or if the party doesn’t have permafury, air/water grants that effortlessly.

MadRabbit.3179:

reikken.4961:

Also, it takes more effort to acquire, but marauder’s gear is better than combining zerker’s and soldier’s

This is a true statement. I just don’t harp on it much when people ask these type of questions, because it’s not very accessible.

Building a gear set out of Soldier’s and Zerker’s or any of the original stat prefixes is considerably easier than trying to build a set out of purely Marauders. It’s a better for a first character to do that, then work on a Marauder’s set slowly.

Maurader’s gives you a higher stat total per peice and the precision to power ratio is more balanced than Zerker’s. If you min max correctly, you get something like 4k extra health for marginal offensive stat loss when comparing full Zerker to Marauders.

I never knew marauders was a non pvp stat. I need to look over my notes but I’m pretty sure I made a mix set for my guardian that matches marauder. I’ll post it here after I double check my math.

This is new in HoT. It’s the Marauder’s prefix. It gives 408 total stats.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Stars

This has been around since the ascended trinkets were first released. It’s the Zerker + Valkyrie prefix. It gives 373 total stats, same as the Zerker’s version, but trades 18 precision for 18 vitality.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bud_of_the_Pale_Tree

Can’t get ascended rings and earrings in Marauders though. Only exotic. Not sure about backpeice.

Since you mentioned you like to WvW havoc roam, I figured I would post the core ele D/D build that I run, and have been having great success with, I spend a lot of my time dueling also, and other then good condi reapers, there’s not many meta specs I find I have a great amount of issues with

http://tinyurl.com/SevensDDbuild