Guild Wars 2

I’m working like crazy to craft my ascended gear for my engineer, but before I make a huge mistake, figured I would ask for advice from y’all.

Which set of stats should I go for on my armor? I mostly PvE (boss farming, silverwastes, dungeons, etc.). I currently use assassin rare gear with some berserker mixed in.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..
Ascended ARMOR is not worth it 99% of the time.

Priority is,
Ascended weapon #1. it is your biggest source of damage increase. the weapon damage componant is a direct 5-7% damage increase.
Then, Rings. rings are easy to get via fractals.
Then, Trinkets. trinkets are easy to get via guild coms. slightly more expensive via laurels.
Then, Neck. via wvw laurels/badges.

Now, save your cash up and craft an ascended backpack. Mawdrey is highly recommended due to mawdrey 2, and its being tied to Bioulum, achievements and AP.

Now, do you REALLY have nothing better to buy with 600-800g? really? nothing? not another char slot? unlimited harvesting tools? copper salvagamatic? Precurser?
Nothing? ok. Craft your ascended armor. Its going to cost you 500-800g, and provide less then 1% dps increase.

Seriously, just get some exotic armor.

As for stats, Zerkers, and Assassins are near indistinguishable for engineer dps. Zerker should give you more dps, Assassins should stack more vul for the party, and bleeds, etc with those traits.

Casia.4281:

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..

Thank you! You may have just saved me a LOT of gold. Is there a guide about this somewhere?

yeah, in our heads. you just got your guide. :P

dont bother with pink armor unless youre doing high fractals or soloing wvw. do bother with a pink weapon and pink trinkets, theyre a decent boost.

go berserker with enough assassin to hit 63% crit rate (with 6 in firearms), so that under banner of precision (or spotter) and fury you hit 100% crit rate when a mob falls below 50% hp. no waste that way. can use gw2skills.net to theorycraft your armor composition.

comes up on reddit like once a week. haha.

If you are in rares still, all around exotics should be your priority. Karma, TP, spvp or dungeons.

Assassin’s emblazoned armor is 5-4g a piece costing about 28g total. As a newish player, that might seem like a lot? but in comparison to that 700g of ascended? lol no. and really thats like 3 hours of silverwastes, or 10 dungeon runs.
Zerkers is slightly more, clocking in at 6-5g each.

Karma gear is 42k per in orr.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor
Again, 252,000 total karma. Not alot for long time players… I have about a million after buying pretty much everything I could want to buy with karma..
How much you have likely depends on how much time you spend in wvw, edge of the mists.
Silverwastes is good gold and karma.

Doing LS season 2 for biolum, mawdrey, and then Silverwastes for them both as well, will give you a ton of cash, and karma. Which can be spent on exotic armor. As well as of course getting you closer to mawdrey. Also completing biolum gives you a FREE ascended chest. ( you can pick any slot, and any class. consider you may wish to get the LIGHT armor chestpiece, from this free armor chest. as that is the most expensive ascended item in the game. 136gold, vs medium chest pieces 86g cost. if you have NO intention of ever making the ascended light armor. ok, then simply take the one you have use of. )

Dungeon tokens can of course give good armors. Citidal of flame gives zerker stats. I can’t remember atm if any give assassins. you can either go to it, or do Spvp COF reward track.

An ascended rifle costs about 90g iirc btw. not including actually leveling hunstman.

Unless I’m mistaken the DnT guys did the math and even not counting "on crit’ procs Assassin was still the higher dps, but I didn’t do the math so don’t quote me on it.

What the others said is true.

Even high level fractals you can hit your 70 AR with +15 rings/back 5’s for accessories/weapon(s) (60 in trinkets 10 in weapons total)

Still something that is nice to work on if you feel like optimizing though, I know I don’t regret mine, though I already had the skill just because by the time I started making it.

Casia.4281:

Karma gear is 42k per in orr.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor
Again, 252,000 total karma. Not alot for long time players… I have about a million after buying pretty much everything I could want to buy with karma..
How much you have likely depends on how much time you spend in wvw, edge of the mists.
Silverwastes is good gold and karma.

be aware that this gear is unsalvageable and soulbound. you will not be able to get your runes out of it cheaply. its excellent for gearing up while poor/new. do not put expensive runes in it because you will regret it (flame legion runes are prolly your best bet to cheap out while working up to something better).

(ascended gear is also unsalvageable but its best in slot and looks to remain that way and has lots of stat combo options that are good and its account bound)

I’ve mentioned on a thread, but that whole, assassins is better thing, is for a specific build I believe. If you are traiting 6/6/…/2 I’m not convinced it’s the case. I also run bombs not ’nades. I run Elixir B.

My personal thought is you can’t really go wrong with zerkers right now. And you can run COF for it for cheap and quick.

Aye if you’re not running the optimal build things may change

I strongly suggest you get a set of Exotic first before you try ascended.

Ascended usually takes at least 30g to craft each weapon and 50g~80g to craft each “piece” of armors. This also excluding to crafting from 400 -> 500 cost, which is around 200g for each category.

When we’re talking about PVE, most situation and classes, zerker is the way to go. You can get a much cheaper price of exotic through WvW badges. The reason why assassin is not picked is because crit rate actually have a much higher chance of hitting 100% than power reaching the diminishing return. Usually it requires 25 stacks of might for power to start hitting diminishing return.

Jerus.4350:

Aye if you’re not running the optimal build things may change

I’m sure there are different optimal builds for different teams. I’ve been playing with a might stacking, cele amulet, engi with runes of strength and the afforementioned utilities and enjoying it quite a lot. To be fair I’m nowhere near an elite player, but I do see some promise in this build.

I dislike ‘nades so I’ve been looking for an alternative.

But even consider you are playing the meta engineer, with intelligence and elixir B or utility goggles, you then have access to a 20% fury buff, is assassins still going to be ideal with those choices in the meta build? I’m not sure.

You can also factor in that a proper team build might be supplying additional crit bonuses, so I still think it somewhat depends on how your group is made up and what exactly you choose for your “?” skill in the meta.

All the calculations for PVE are generally done with the assumption of full buffs, so yeah I doubt it affects the assassin situation.

And yeah you certainly can and should tweak around builds to best fit your group.

And my point was basically that if you ask for the best, it’s safe to assume that the best builds are also being used, otherwise they’d have said “what is best given <insert parameters here>”

Toxsa.2701:

I strongly suggest you get a set of Exotic first before you try ascended.

Ascended usually takes at least 30g to craft each weapon and 50g~80g to craft each “piece” of armors. This also excluding to crafting from 400 -> 500 cost, which is around 200g for each category.

When we’re talking about PVE, most situation and classes, zerker is the way to go. You can get a much cheaper price of exotic through WvW badges. The reason why assassin is not picked is because crit rate actually have a much higher chance of hitting 100% than power reaching the diminishing return. Usually it requires 25 stacks of might for power to start hitting diminishing return.

I’d not go with WvW badge gear unless you’re planning on a cheapo set of gear, toss scholar runes in it and suddenly if you ever move on from that gear you’ll have paid more for the full set than the alternatives.

Even with full assassin gear + weapon with scholar runes you’re looking at like 62% crit chance, which is right on target, 8% from Disc banner, 20% fury, up to 90% at that point, and 10% while target is under 50% for the 100%, nothing wasted. It’s only if you have spotter or stack above that point with other stuff that you will see excess.

Casia.4281:

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..
Ascended ARMOR is not worth it 99% of the time.

Priority is,
Ascended weapon #1. it is your biggest source of damage increase. the weapon damage componant is a direct 5-7% damage increase.
Then, Rings. rings are easy to get via fractals.
Then, Trinkets. trinkets are easy to get via guild coms. slightly more expensive via laurels.
Then, Neck. via wvw laurels/badges.

Now, save your cash up and craft an ascended backpack. Mawdrey is highly recommended due to mawdrey 2, and its being tied to Bioulum, achievements and AP.

Now, do you REALLY have nothing better to buy with 600-800g? really? nothing? not another char slot? unlimited harvesting tools? copper salvagamatic? Precurser?
Nothing? ok. Craft your ascended armor. Its going to cost you 500-800g, and provide less then 1% dps increase.

Seriously, just get some exotic armor.

As for stats, Zerkers, and Assassins are near indistinguishable for engineer dps. Zerker should give you more dps, Assassins should stack more vul for the party, and bleeds, etc with those traits.

Does ascended weapon damage really effects kits, i thought kits have a fix weapon damage?

Haralin.1473:

Casia.4281:

you are skipping from rare to ascended?

ok as always lets give the speech..
Ascended ARMOR is not worth it 99% of the time.

Priority is,
Ascended weapon #1. it is your biggest source of damage increase. the weapon damage componant is a direct 5-7% damage increase.
Then, Rings. rings are easy to get via fractals.
Then, Trinkets. trinkets are easy to get via guild coms. slightly more expensive via laurels.
Then, Neck. via wvw laurels/badges.

Now, save your cash up and craft an ascended backpack. Mawdrey is highly recommended due to mawdrey 2, and its being tied to Bioulum, achievements and AP.

Now, do you REALLY have nothing better to buy with 600-800g? really? nothing? not another char slot? unlimited harvesting tools? copper salvagamatic? Precurser?
Nothing? ok. Craft your ascended armor. Its going to cost you 500-800g, and provide less then 1% dps increase.

Seriously, just get some exotic armor.

As for stats, Zerkers, and Assassins are near indistinguishable for engineer dps. Zerker should give you more dps, Assassins should stack more vul for the party, and bleeds, etc with those traits.

Does ascended weapon damage really effects kits, i thought kits have a fix weapon damage?

not sure the current mechanics honestly. At release for a time, I was heavy into testing mechanics, and documenting. not so much since returning back in March or so..

In the past, kits had their own weapon damage. this damage was comparable to Rare gear.
920dps iirc. Compared to exotic pistol of 986, and 1050 of rifle iirc.
Toolbelt skills were effected by your equiped weapon. So a throw wrench would scale into that 1050 ave with a rifle, but only the 920 if you had the toolkit or grenades equipped.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation
Here is the exotic weapon strength of weapons. was mis-remembering them a bit.
pistol was 952.5, rifle 1095.5ave. Weapon kits back then listed 969 as MAX damage. I may be remembering the 920 wrong, but it was around there.
Ascended pistol is 920-1080 for 1000 ave, ascended rifle is 1035-1265 for 1150 ave.

I have heard kits now scale to “ascended”. something about 5%.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weapon_kit
“Kits scale damage based on the rarity of the player’s equipped weapon.”
I have not tested this for accuracy or exactly how much they scale.
That this info is not on the wiki…. Maybe I need to get back to work? haha.

Toolbelt skills do seem stable now. rifle or toolkit equipped, throw wrench seems to do the same damage. It does less with pistol equipped though. so its now based on equipped weapon, and not overwritten by weapon kit, like it used to.

kit damage scales based on weapon quality

it used to be balanced around exotics when there was no ascended, then ascended came out and people whined, so we got a bad deal. now an engi needs to have an ascended weapon to be at its maximum potential. i guess its “more fair” than simply letting kits have ascended damage no matter what your weapon quality is.

Checking tooltips now.
Have to actually playtest to check if tooltips are wrong… but..

With 1919 power.
My tool Kit “Smack” lists 545 damage with ascended pistol, exotic, rare, fine and even with no weapon equipped at all.

Tooltips are: Damage= (Average weapon strength)*power*skill coeff/2600 armor.
This means, the tooltip thinks the average weapon kit strength is 923. (which checking back to my old figures I estimated “872-969” with 921 ave as kit weapon strength.

Ascended rifle goes up to 600. (but thats due to my zerker rifle 2112 power.)

so… tooltips seem to think weapon kits are the same abyssmal sub exotic weapon strength.

tooltips often lie. will check in practice in a moment.

testing on reef riders in southsun.
first frag shot as control to get estimated 2262 armor. this was fast. just need a rough number.

Then ascended smack/whack.
636min-737max over a good amount of hits. vs 2262 armor, and 1919 power.
this suggests about 1012 weapon strength.

Swapped to fine pistol. testing atm, noticeable loss in damage, despite tooltip staying the same.
731 ave fine weapon strength?

867 ave rare weapon strength

974 ave exotic weapon strength

these numbers are “ballpark” from empirical testing. sample size was only 40-50 hits for frag to get armor, and maybe 20-30 for each smack/whack. not precise. +/- error is probably like 5-15.
consider I said, old toolkit weapon strength was 921. and I just did this quick test and came up with 974. which is it? I dont know.

THIS chart from the DnT forum has 1017 in weapon strength. I do not know where they got that value. and it matches no other weapon average or max. So, honestly I would assume that is the correct value for weapon kit strength with ascended weapon equipped.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1weoy2tkW-dIVSWfsuO9VV9-gGNGlrzRZeFKse4cIOys/edit#gid=0

“ascended” is supposed to be 5% more then exotic. well 974x 1.05 is 1022.
So its possible exotic was buffed to 974ish, and ascended is then 1017.

So yeah, I can confirm. tooltips lie. And weapon kits do scale across all rarities.

Quick testing with rifle. hipshot gave me 2296 expected armor. which is pretty close. so I feel I can trust the frag shot coeff. which I was not sure on..

Prelim testing on ascended rifle with tool kit.. 1031ave. result inconclusive. big enough variance that its possible rifle vs pistol matters. small enough, that sample size might have caused it.

Plus im dumb and forgot smack and whack add vul. that will have inflated values 4-6%. this can account for the rifle vs pistol issue.
base theory on scaling is still confirmed though, but estimated weapon strength will have to be adjusted, and margin of error increased there a bit.

need to test with grenades to remove my vul stupidity.