Guild Wars 2

Arenanet already knows what you wear for which activities and how often you do so but I am curious. Which types (stats) of armor do you wear, why, and how often?

Explorer’s – Worn exclusively for farming, and quite frequently, before rares became guaranteed drops. Not much use since I began leveling alts and events with chests became guaranteed rare drops. However, the pavillion zerg brought out the farmer in me once again. Use went from 90% of the time down to 5% but is back up.

Rabid – I used to wear this in dungeons exclusively when running conditions but the high armor value seemed to attract too much unwanted attention from bosses. I do not use it much anymore but remember I have it for condi-bombing in wvw.

Soldier’s – This is my mainstay, all-purpose armor I use in wvw, pvp, and dungeons. Use about 40% of the time.

Rampager – If I need more damage than Soldier’s, I will put on the Rampager set for all that precision. Use about 20% of the time.

Shaman’s – On occasion, I need something very tanky with better healing and pull out my Shaman’s set. This happens infrequently but the set helps soak a little extra damage and boosts Well of Blood. I use it less than 10% of the time.

Other sets are mixed stats of Apothecary, Magi, Cleric’s, Berserker, Rabid, Carrion, Knights, Soldier’s, Valkyrie, and whatever. Most are left over from temple armor or experiments in stat blending and rune sets, or just because I like mixing skins for new looks.

Explorer’s – anytime I don’t feel like my main gear set is needed, which means anything that isn’t Fractals (which I basically never run) or dungeons that I am not confident in running without the slightly better gear stats from my main set.

Rampager – every other time, since I’m too lazy to actually get more than two sets, and frankly have never felt the need for more defense than none. I’m already playing necro, might as well go full masochism route.

Green explorer. Only MF is needed as open world farm is cakewalk.

Rabid. Still fun seeing numbers filling the screen.

Carrion. My first gear as it’s the craftable condition gear. But I haven’t touched it for a LONG time.

Knight + berserker. The reason didn’t go full berserker is I don’t take my necro in dungeon as a “fake” warrior, only less capable of doing so. So I have some balance in defense for casual guild dungeon run. Basically when I get bored with condition and want to do in power.

If I srsly need DPS or some kind of support, I reroll on my warrior or guardian.

Knights+Berserker mix for my power build. I like the extra defense. It lets me stand my ground a bit better than pure glass. The more time I can spend autoattacking in dagger or DS and the less time dodging, the higher my damage is going to be.

Rabid +Carrion mix for my condi build, mostly Rabid with a splash of Carrion for a more even split between Armor and Health. It’s just a good set for condition damage thanks to Barbed Precision and Sigils of Earth.

I’ve been considering getting a set for healing support but I already have a Guardian for that so it seems somewhat overkill.

Rampager – farming since it came with scav runes, also open pve aint so hard to need any special stats so hybrid playstyle destroys everything.
Zerker – rarely use it and has been in bank since MF/Frost and Flame updates, but still useful on some older/not revamped encounters.
Soldier – other half of the time/all new dungeons and encounters.
Got a Carrion/Rampager/Apoth mix, but its greens/yellows and a few ascended items for flavour text not actual build id use.

I only use full soldier at the moment for everything (I hate dying) Tho I have considered buying a Knights set as a 2nd

Interesting feedback! I had thought from forum posts that Berserker would be at the top of most Necromancer’s list. I went for Rampager simply because Necromancer is so good at condition damage I hated to ignore that aspect in armor.

My very first L80 craft set was a green Explorer’s set as I started working my way into Orr. After that, I crafted a rare Valkyrie set, followed by an exotic Carrion set once I’d salvaged enough ectoplasm. (I farmed the rares myself instead of buying them and made five Superior Runes of the Pirate.) Then, bought the Grenth temple karma set. It seems like a long time ago but that was less than a year.

Somewhat of a clothes horse, I have been skinning crafted sets using mob drop and karma armor from all over and farmed HotW and AC dungeons just for armor that looks good. Too many fine transmutation stones used.

My first set after hitting 80 was to buy rare Explorer set (I never bought armor till then, so I had enough really quickly for the full sets), gave me really high MF to farm my “real” sets with, and power/condition damage so my DPS didn’t suffer much. Over time I just found that I honestly didn’t need anything better; DPS was high enough for my tastes (although it could have been higher obv) drops were great, and dungeons were pretty easy anyway, so it took me ages to buy more.

Finally I got Arachnophobia at the very beginning of the Halloween event’s Labyrinth thing where they had respawning Champions every 30 minutes or so (the farming was strong with that event, till they nerfed the hell out of the drops), and immediately threw it up on the TP for 100g. Took ages to sell, but with that I bought full T3 cultural, and figured since dungeons were easy with rare MF armor I didn’t need the defense, so it was rampager or berzerker. And frankly, I like the flexibility in Rampager gear, I get really strong condition damage from Dhuumfire, Terror, and the other things I throw on, yet if someone pushes my conditions off I still hit like a truck. Also, I’m too lazy to farm any more armor, so there’s that too.

Necros Stalker.2713:

I only use full soldier at the moment for everything (I hate dying) Tho I have considered buying a Knights set as a 2nd

Full Soldier and knight isn’t that much different.

I find myself using zerker gear most of the time. In open world there is already more than enough aoe and conditions. In dungeons most of the groups of mobs are skipped or die quickly anyway, and I find the runtime to be better with more single target dps for boss/champ fights. Concerning survivability, I find that dodging plus death shroud is enough, unless the hit is so big it would have torn through ds and killed you regardless.

Soldiers – Love survivability
Zerkers – When Soldier DPS isn’t enough
Rabid – Conditionmancer armor
Explorers – power Magic find, back when it was useful
Mad King’s set – Magic find for condition dmg, back when it was useful

Zzz what am I gonna do with my 2 magic find sets….