‘Endgame’ gear

A friend of mine said that the high tier endgame gear fully comes from crafting. Is this correct? I find crafting boring so would like to ignore it entirely: am I missing out by doing so? Thanks!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor

No your friend is not right. He is basically half right.

The highest tier gear is basically ascended or legendary (both have the same stats). There are multiple sources to acquire ascended gear, some of which only open up once you have your first set. This mostly holds true for armor since weapons and trinkets have many more avenues to get acquired by now. The fastest but most expensive approach is to craft ascended armor for the first set. It relies on no random drop luck.

Cellofrag made a nice guide video on all slots:

While comprehensive, he does NOT mention all methods of acquisition and does mention pvp and wvw primarily.

The ascended armor wiki lists some of the achievement collections which yield 1 piece of ascended armor (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor) and it is highly recommended to take the chest piece first, since that piece is the most expensive to craft.

TL;DR:Ascended gear is acquired over different parts of the game. The fastest path for PvE players is Tier 4 fractals, but is also both: subject to loot rng as well as requires a first full armor set of ascended gear. Crafting is often the most expensive, but fastest/ most strait forward way to get ascended gear.