Guild Wars 2

I’m about to purchase my first piece. I play mostly power builds, so I was thinking of going with Ring of Red Death. It’s got +126 Power, +85 Precision, +85 Ferocity and an Offensive Infusion Slot (whatever that is).

It costs 25 Laurels and 250 Badges of Honour.

Then there’s also Althea’s Ashes. It’s got +110 Power, +74 Precision, +74 Ferocity and an Offensive Infusion Slot.

It costs 40 Laurels and 50 Globs of Ectoplasm.

I suppose I’m confused over the fact that Althea’s Ashes is so much more expensive, yet seems… Worse? Or are Ectos easier to come by than Badges of Honour?

For reference, current funds are:

45 Laurels.
24 Globs of Ecto.
603 Badges of Honour.

They don’t compete, one is a ring, one an accessory.

Silverkey.2078:

They don’t compete, one is a ring, one an accessory.

…

headdesk

So much for my reading comprehension. I just saw that they’d both replace my Ruby Orichalcum X, and didn’t bother to read further, I guess.

So in order to gain the full range of ascended items, you’ll be doing both PvP as well as farming exotics and rares for ectos, is that correct?

FYI, you can purchase accessories with guild accommodations, you need 12, so you can make yourself a savings.

If you are in a guild, get the commendations to buy the accessories instead of spending the ectos. They cost 12 commendations and 5 gold…much cheaper than 50 ectos, if your guild does missions

Additionally doing fractals is a great way to have far too many ascended rings. You can also buy the ascended rings with the pristine fractal relics. You get one per set of 4 fractals per reward tier per day.

There will also be more things to get from fractals in HoT if you’re getting it so now is a good time to start getting into them and levels 1-30 are generally pretty easy.

In other words, save your laurels, badges and ectos as they have more use in other things generally. I believe laurels are still the only way to get ascended necklaces but you can reduce that cost a little by buying it in WvW for a combination of badges and laurels.

Ascended rings: easiest to get from fractals of the mist by either daily chest after level 11 or buy using tokens
Ascended accessories: cheapest to get from guild commendations
Ascended amulet: cheapest to get from WvW laurel merchant

Some stuff to add, before you throw away lots of money

Ascended armor is best to be dropped by fractals since light armor is ridiculously overpriced due the fact that every armor needs silk and something and light armor silk and silk. Yes that’s no typo :P

Ascended weapons drop very very VERY rare in fotm, so better build those yourself.

The current best stats for a mesmer are as much assassin as you can get. So if you play often the dungeon “caudecus manor”, you can even get an ascended assassin accessory for having everything from that dungeon. The other assassin accessory is from arah, so a bit harder to optain

You can change the stats in the mystic forge if you have already some ascended gear, but beware that the sigils, runes and infusions, aswell skins will be lost during that progress. Also the “meta” might change for HoT (addon) at october 23.

If you want some more detailed informations about mesmer gear and the math behind it, you can pm me anytime!

greez

I forgot to add here’s the general order you should really get ascended gear in:

1. Rings/Earring trinkets.
2. Necklace.
3. Weapons.
4. Legendaries.
5. Nice skins.
6. Awesome runes.
7. Lots of other stuff.
8. Maybe ascended armour if you’re that bored.

The thing about ascended armour is you can’t get runes back from it, you can only over write them. So in general I stick to exotic, especially if I’m putting in a full set of perplexity, tormenting, traveler, hoelbrak, scholar runes etc. The stats from accessories are much larger than from armour and weapons have the largest impact on damage so generally I make them before armour.

You guys have ALL been a tremendous help! This is all so very complicated.

Thank you very much.