Guild Wars 2

This might be a bit premature, seeing as how my thief’s only level 29, but I’ve been reading up on exotic gear sets to figure out how I’m going to eventually look at endgame. I’ll probably end up going with either D/D or S/P condition damage for PvE (I don’t like PvP, generally), so I figured that Carrion gear would be the best route for a combination of damage and survivability.

Unfortunately, I really hate how the Sorrow’s Embrace and Citadel of Flame sets look. Yeah, it’s a lame reason to pass up on the ideal setup, but looking cool is one of my favorite reasons for playing a game that has armor differentiation.

So after that long intro, I have a few questions:

1. Would it make sense to go with the Caudecus’s Manor armor set and mix Rampager pieces with Shaman pieces for condition damage and survivability? Do any experienced thieves run with that kind of set up?

2. Is there any sort of mechanic that allows you to reskin your armor to look like a different piece of armor? I ask because the Crucible of Eternity armor is, imo, the best looking set, but it only offers glass cannon stat combos. I’d love to get Sorrow’s Embrace Carrion armor but reskin it to look like Crucible of Eternity.

3. Can a full Rampager armor set up’s fragility be adequately mitigated through other equipment? Like with Vitality accessories or weapons.

Edit: 4. Leatherworkers can make level 80 equipment, right? How would you compare the difficulty of crafting a full exotic set with the difficulty of getting one through dungeons?

This will be the first character that I max out, so I don’t have any actual endgame dungeon/equipment experiences, so feel free to point out any inconsistencies I’ve made in my opinions or questions. Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

Black Frog.9274:

Fine Transmutation stones let you change the look of 80+ armor. They cost gems though.

You can also get some from Map Completion and Black Lion Chests (Should pick up a few as well as some keys, you get I think 2 keys from Personal Story aswell (The level 10 one gives a guaranteed one))

On Topic:

As far as Leatherworking gear goes, you can either craft it yourself (Though that does take a bit of time and such getting materials and leveling up the crafting skill) or buy it from the Trading Post (If I recall correctly, each piece of exotic armour at level 80 costs around 1-5 gold a piece depending on the stats on it (As far as I can tell, Berserker gear is the most expensive)) which can in cases be much easier to do if you can make some money (Selling a few of the lowest tier crafting materials I picked up got me 2g for example)

1. No. If you’re going for unicorn build get a full carrion.

2. Yes, you can buy transmutation stone to transmute gear.
A feature that a certain game copied (but hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery)

3. You don’t need to mitigate anything with a unicorn build, you are immortal (in PvE at least).

Red Falcon.8257:

1. No. If you’re going for unicorn build get a full carrion.

2. Yes, you can buy transmutation stone to transmute gear.
A feature that a certain game copied (but hey, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery)

3. You don’t need to mitigate anything with a unicorn build, you are immortal (in PvE at least).

What’s a unicorn build?