Exotic stats are in groups of 3. For example Beserker armor/weapons gives you Power Primary, with secondary Crit chance and Crit damage. Soldier’s is another set that gives you Power primary with Vitality and Toughness secondary. Beserker armor is very strong in pve right now because of the excellent damage output. Soldier’s armor is tanky and very strong in pvp or wvw. It can be used in pvp but you won’t have as high damage output.
Knight’s armor is a 3rd set that I would think about. It gives you Power, toughness, and crit chance. It’s a middle ground armor set for a power build because it gives moderate damage and moderate sustain. My advice, think about zerker for pve and knights for other areas and then go from there, depending if you really want more damage or more sustain.
NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER EVER GO CONDI AS A GUARDIAN. PLEASE.
As the prior poster explained to start ascended isn’t your goal just yet. It’s a medium-term goal but not short-term. The small difference between an ascended weapon or armor piece is nearly impossible to notice unless they’re 100% ascended equipped. You. Will. Be. Fine and dandy.
So for exotics, like mentioned again before they are found in all your questioned methods. The best imo especially for a new player is to run dungeons. There are 8 dungeons in the game, Ascalonian Catacombs, Twilight Arbor, Sorrows Embrace, Citadel of Flame, Crucible of Eternity, City of Arah, Honor of the Waves, and Cadecus’s Manor. To run an explorable dungeon, you must have either completed the dungeon’s story mode or have had someone in your party complete story mode to open themselves. Every completed path of a dungeon (3 in each except arah which has 4) will give you 40 tokens in a once per day daily chest, and 20 extra. The 20 extra can be obtained multiple times if you really feel like doing it over and over. The once per day chest also gives you somewhere between 1-3 gold depending on the path’s difficulty and length.
A safe bet to get started is to run AC and CoF. AC gives 1.5g per path and CoF gives 1g per path. These dungeons are considered some of the fastest and easiest to do.
When you earn the tokens, they can be spent at the corresponding dungeon vendor in Lion’s Arch fort Mariner. (Exotics are in the second tab) They cost between 180-390 per weapon I believe and 180-300 for armor?. They take a bit of time to acquire but it’s free and you earn money from doing so. Another reason to start with CoF and AC is because CoF is the easiest dungeon to acquire zerker gear from, and same with AC for soldiers.
Crafting will make you exotic armor/weapons but it takes a bit of time to craft to 400 if youre a new player. If you really want to just spend gold you can buy equivalent stat pieces that you can find in dungeons in the trading post.
