Guild Wars 2

ok i am a little confused about gear and what makes a difference.
im not sure what the best way to go about gear is ive just started saving everything for mystic forge and slowly converting things to get exotics. is this the main way for gear?

also i havent equipped anything yet because i have no idea what runes make a difference. is there any point of holding onto a non lvl 80 exotic?

ive built myself so far entirely in the tanky trait trees mostly because they seemed to apply more conditions and buffs. main slot skills i use are usually glamour fields and stealth abilities.

also i dont understand what a precursor is?

sorry so many questions

Reikan.2908:

ok i am a little confused about gear and what makes a difference.
im not sure what the best way to go about gear is ive just started saving everything for mystic forge and slowly converting things to get exotics. is this the main way for gear?

Don’t use the Mystic Toilet to get gear, it is completely random and unreliable.

Easiest ways to get lv80 exotic gear is buy it on Trading Post, craft it yourself or something in-between.
If you have enough karma, you can get exotic gear from orr temples when they are open (no swords over the temple on the map). Be aware that the stat combinations are pretty limited, no zerker stats for instance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Temple_armor

You can also buy exotic gear in WvW for badges of honor and a bit of gold.

If all this sounds too hard/expensive, rare (yellow) gear is perfectly viable for most content and it’s much less pricey. I suggest you don’t buy yellow gear with karma/badges, save it up for exotic gear instead.

Precursors are a totally random drop, they cannot be crafted/farmed. They are the basis for legendary weapons, something I suggest you don’t worry about just yet. Legendary weapons are mostly just a very fancy skin, you can attain the same stats with a non-legendary weapon (ascended tier, 1 step above exotic. Stat difference is minimal either way).

Reikan.2908:

ok i am a little confused about gear and what makes a difference.
im not sure what the best way to go about gear is ive just started saving everything for mystic forge and slowly converting things to get exotics. is this the main way for gear?

also i havent equipped anything yet because i have no idea what runes make a difference. is there any point of holding onto a non lvl 80 exotic?

ive built myself so far entirely in the tanky trait trees mostly because they seemed to apply more conditions and buffs. main slot skills i use are usually glamour fields and stealth abilities.

also i dont understand what a precursor is?

sorry so many questions

Mystic forge is one of many ways to get gear… But just buying from the Trading Post is probably the best option, unless you get extreeemely lucky with te mystic forge.

in the end lvl80 exotic is what you’re aiming for, but if you don’t have the funds for it yet, you can stick to rare (yellow) gear. You can always just salvage them for a chance on globs of ectoplasms, which you can sell, or stare at the beautifull purpleness and drool at it.

Unless you’re going to go with pro mlg 1336 elitist speedrunnerz, trait setups don’t really matter. It’s easy to respec, and will be even easier once the 15 april patch hits.

A precursor is a regular lvl 80 exotic that is also a material in legendary crafting. Always check what an item’s price is before selling/salvaging/equipping. It’s better to sell a precursor and buy a full gear set, than to equip it by accident and bind it to your account ;).

You’ll generally want to aim for direct damage (power, precision, critical damage), as it’s the most effective in pve. Knight’s is a good choice if you want to get used to how dungeons and pve work. If you feel like you have too much surviavibility, you cna slowly replace the knight (preferable rare gear), with exotic berserker for more damage.

I’ve been doing nothing but wvw for so long haven’t paid attention to gear and barely explored maps. Also I stopped playing for like 2 years so I forgot a lot. I just started guesting on a server yesterday to do trains since my server is dead. And made like 5-6 exotics so far. And I just got to lvl 80 today.

To calavel mystic forge isn’t random. It upgrades what you put in, if you put the same things in it improves it. If you put random things in then yes it is random.

What’s berserker?

-The game hasn’t even been out for two years.
-The Mystic Forge is random, it’s bit always an upgrade. About 80% of the time it will give you an item of the same rarity, the rest if the time it will upgrade it to a higher quality. If the items are all the same type it will return the same item type, as you said. The only time it’s not random is when you put in a specific recipe.

-If you’ve been doing mostly WvW then use your badges to buy exotic gear. Badges can be viewed in your account wallet, along with most other currencies.

Okay, Forge is not completely random. But I think most people agree it’s not worth using compared to vendoring/salvaging. The chance of getting an upgraded item is very very small.

The best way to get good gear and saving money is to craft exotic (if you have a crafting profession) or buy it from the Trading Post.
With loot, i usually salvage white and blue rarity and forge green for yellow gear, which I in turn salvage for ectoplasm.

Avoid the Mystic Forge if you don’t intend to craft anything out of it or to rely on luck.

Equip runes that fits your build best. There isn’t any right or wrong to be honest. With the upcoming updates, it might be best to stick with one type of rune.

A precursor is the weapon needed to craft a legendary. In other words, an ingredient.

Also, when you pick traits, focus on what the traits give you, not what stats you get from the trait line

i dont know how long this has been out but i started and stopped playing this the month of release.

i guess i must have had good luck since i managed to forge 8 exotics from a day of farming greens. but yeh i really need to do these other ways of getting exotics

getting to max crafting lvl will prob still take me awhile hard to always have stock of some items.
are the exotics you get from map completions and badges the same as the ones you get from drops?

thanks for all the replies btw