Another bank tab with rares... I can't choose what fits my toons. Autist in need of advice.

I love this game since release! I have a lvl 80 of each profession and hope to do dungeons somewhere in the future. As soon as I know I have gear that fits the role I'm playing.The role is the problem, in traditional MMO's it's easier to know your place in the group. Healer has a load of healing spells, tank has defense gear and skills to aggro.

I have autism so knowing my place/function in a dungeon group is critical for me. I loved playing healer and tank in WoW dungeons, it's not that my autism makes me bad in my role. But it makes that I need clear info on what makes/defines my role.

And at that point GW2 is unique for me in all those MMO's, exciting but extremely confusing as well. I ingame /map chat I hear 'get Berserker, 'it's a safe option for PvE' . But I can't believe it can be that easy, everyone wearing Berserker gear in a dungeon?

I know about the stats and what it does, boons/condition durations etc. I spent hours on the official wiki.But to make it extra confusing for me is the Gear 'styles', such as Berserker, Rampaging, Shaman, Cleric, Carrion, Minstrel, etcetera they have overlapping stats. Especially those with 'concentration+toughness' and 'healing+toughness' combinations in them. In traditional MMO's those would be separate healer/tank stats. It's a chaotic overlapping mess for me.that is where I need help.

I made a one member 'Guild' (with a vault) only to stash my higher tier stuff away and I think I'm at my 11th bank tab upgrade by now full with rare and exotics. It's getting out of hand. I want to get rid of unwanted stuff so I need advice desperately. And get an empty bank where I can put usefull stuff in :)

btw Is there one of those gear styles that are useless in general?

Below is a list of my professions and what my aim for their role is. I don't want to ask you to invest loads of your time giving me possible builds.What I'd like to ask is how to approach my decisions in choice of gear, in a step-by-step (is autism friendly :)) checklist.

Necro: As long as minions are as usefull as possible. Conditions are something I'm interested in as well, fits the Neco. I'm a fanatic staff user so far.Hunter: As long as pets are as usefull as possible. My toon is high crit% +bonus dam. Not so complicated this one.Mesmer: Focused on strong illusions, but also interested in Mesmer that can make efficient use of boons (healer?).Elementalist: Very tempted to play a water focused, because I am a glass cannon all the time. Preferring survivability+steady DPS over high DPS/crit. But maybe Earth would be better (protection)Guardian: Tank, preferrably with good burning aggro (like Paladin consecration in WoW).Warrior: High vit, crit % + bonus dam. Not so complicated this oneRevenant: No idea....Engineer: As long as turrets are as usefull as possible, and stay ranged myself.Thief: I have alot of life stealing/replenish on this one adnd like it. Not sure if I should add power/crit or condition for stats.

Please don't spend time in responding about good builds, they may get outdated in future updates.But I'm interested in how someone decides which gear fits the best for their toon in step-by-step short explanation.

Do you first choose your weapons, build and wear gear that matches these to define your role?Or do you first choose your role and match the rest to it?Why would you choose +heal +toughness combined style gear for a healer or tank? Does a light armoured healer focused benefit from the toughness on those gear 'style'.It's confusing because they overlap the traditional MMO roles and I need a clear path.

I hope you understand my problem a little and I hope I'm not being too confusing for you. I just need help in making good choice in all those gear styles that often have controversing stats on them.

Kind regards,Roy/Grampybone

Salvage or sell all rare gear.If you want some inspiration for what builds and gear are useful check out Metabattle, Quantify, or some of these random open world builds.

I'm not the best at builds but I do have a series of questions that I ask myself. I hope these help.

I first take a look at this image. It's a bit out of date, but the basic ideas are still good.

1. How offensive do I want my character to be? The more offensive I want my character to be, the higher up the list I start.
2. Will I be doing physical damage or conditional damage? I swap out Power, Precision, and Ferocity for Condition Damage and Condition Duration.
3. What other attributes would I like to have? Healing to help myself or others? Concentration because I want to spam boons? Vitality to live through conditions?

Since there are a lot more stats in the game than on that image, I find I can look at the four-attribute sets and find a set or a pair of sets that work for me. For example:

1. I want my holosmith to be very aggressive. So I'll start by looking at the 100% level.
2. I'll be doing physical damage. So I'll look at Berserker or Assassin.
3. I'd like some extra vitality to keep me safe from conditions. I'll choose Marauder from the four-attribute sets, which is like Berserker or Assassin, but has some extra vitality.

^ those tips are very on point.

healer and tank in this game is a bit different. they are like 2 different roles and not one.although a healer could be a tank, but you don't have many defensive skills to block attacks and so on. so you can't heal others or yourself effectively.

yea most people in PvE would wear Berserker stats for direct damage. Berserker is focused on Power, Precision and Ferocity.Power - your direct damage. the higher the better.where as Precision would define how many percentage you could deal critical damage. a higher percentage would mean you have more chance to deal more damage.and Ferocity would be how much damage you deal if you critically hit a mob.(ex: your Precision is at 61%, and your Ferocity is somewhere 184%. considering at 61% is quite high, so 1 out of 2 hits, you'll crit. aka you'll deal critical damage for 184% more than your normal attacks.)Precision and Ferocity would always go hand in hand if you want to deal direct damage.hence Berserker becomes the standard for Power damage source.dungeons can be run fast, so Power damage is highly preferred here, rather than wait for all the Conditions take time to tick in.

for gear "styles", what you call them, are what make each individual stand out and that's where personality comes in.since you have different choices. people could run a healing set. but they have a choice to make them tougher in order to take more damage.while the other person would prefer more health pool just to be on a safe side. they both can because those would be 2 different sets.or they could both mix up 2 sets to find a middle ground with both Toughness and Vitality to withstand more damage, have a bit more health and have the Healing Power.usually, primary stats for a gear are 3 stats. 1 would be more than the other 2. where as some have 4 different stats, then they are lower in numbers. offer a bit of everything.don't compare any other "traditional" MMO to GW2. why do you make yourself miserable? cuz they're different.

blue/green are trash since they're "common". like a hero shouldn't be wearing common clothes. they don't offer protection.yellow or rare gears are still "common" but you could salvage them for valuable materials or sell them straight away on the trading post.rare gears are common, but still valuable than blue and green. so you should save plenty of space by now.exotics are different. they're a bit "high end" before ascended, pink gears.if you want to build a tank and heal, then keep anything with Toughness and Healing on, you could salvage the rest.could also leave some Berserker stats to help with clearing dungeons. since most encounters happen so fast, there's no need a tank or healer spot.

as for Condition damage. this is how it works.most conditions have their own internal timer if you hover a trait or utility. they don't last long. the moment they vanish, you deal no damage.that way you'll need Condition duration on top of it to prolong all or any specific conditions you have.and the more conditions you have, the more damage would tick in.(ex: say ok, i want to run a horde of minions on my necro. do i have traits that buff the minions? which will fit my theme/idea.do those traits buff any weapon sets? if it is then yes, i'll use them. if not, i could use whatever weapons that have conditions on it.now for gears, what offer Condition damage and Condition duration?

the bottom line. adapt with the game, don't compare them to one another cuz you'll never get your right answers.

Thank you for the answers and help! I'll go through my toons one by one and decide what to choose, maybe 2 specs. Maybe I'll wait untill I have all the specialized specs completed so I can try them out too. I'll think about it :)

Do note that depending on the content (mostly fracs/raids) you might be "forced into" builds from the Metabattle/Qt websites someone mentioned. These are generally "meta" or most optimal builds for group content. For open world the build is up to you... I'd start with picking weapon sets since weapon sets play a big part into what kind of build you use. For example for necro scepter and staff are condi weapons as they apply condition effects on hit. While Greatsword and Dagger are power weapons as they don't really apply damaging conditions but have higher raw damage. After finding which weapons you like, you can build armor stats/traits around these weps.

Something to bear in mind is also the dev's concept behind each class.

Thief, for example, is a very poor healer yet a high damage-dealer, and a decent evasion tank with daredevil.

Necro is not good in team-based settings due to having little to share with others (few boons, life-siphoning in blood traitline is about it, undesirable aoe fields) but is in turn not so dependent on others for max damage and is quite survivable through shroud and even minions. It is however generally in a bad spot as it's damage isn't great, it has no real utility in team fights and it has low sustain because it has no blocks, invulns, poor access to stabilty etc. It is however king at condition management.

Chronomancer is great at tanking and boon-sharing, not so much at healing. I enjoyed a reflect build in pve with assassins' gear before switching to power chrono. Basic mesmer i found lacking in the damage dept, though that has seen some trait buffs since i tried it a couple of years ago.

Ele are good at healing and boon-sharing (ele is good at healing, ,boonsharing and damage if you tailor your traitlines and gear- not all in one build though).

Ranger/druid have team utility with spotter trait and (less so now) grace of the land in druid and can be quite a survivable class through choice of pet and complimentary traits. If your going the tank route with ranger though, it's not wanted much in raids/fractals/dungeons mainly due to pet mechanics and the encounters themselves.

Warrior is high-damage, high-survivability, good in teams due to banners and phalanx strength (a bit toned-down in the latest patch).

Revenant/herald are decent boon-bots, middling damage, a bit of a jack-of-all-trades class.

Guardian makes a great tank (blocks, aegis etc) and a decent healer, though i'm enjoying a retaliation build at the moment which does respectable damage.

Engi i have no idea, could not get to grips with this class.

It also depends on what content you want to play- minion builds of all kinds are generally frowned-upon in fractals and raids (apart from mesmer, as they pretty much can't help it). WvW is generally all about team utility, boons, healing, condition cleanses etc (imo it's pvp so i hardly play it apart from getting the gift of battle for legendary weaps).

I've probably left loads of stuff out, but hopefully it's enough to give you some pointers.Good luck :)

Like some others have mentioned, go ahead and salvage or sell your rare gear. I only use rares on level 80 characters until I find or make something better.

Second thing to keep in mind is, your gear, rotations, and even your performance don't have to be perfect. After map completing Tangled Depths on my Engineer, I discovered that she was still running around with a couple of pieces of rare gear and only a green amulet. Perfection may bring peace of mind, but it doesn't guarantee fun and happiness. The point is to have fun and enjoy yourself, don't let a missing piece of perfect gear get in the way of having fun.

Thanks for the extra replies, they're also very helpfull!I'm going to spend this weekend on deciding what I want with each profession.One off-spec of what fits the profession imo, a 'fun' build. Necro ->Minions, Ranger ->Pets, Engi ->Turrets, Mesmer->Illlusions. And match choice of spec/gear/weapons to make those as usefull as possible.And then a serious main spec-build, which is aimed for functioning in a group, hopefully dungeons in future once I master the build/skills.Raids/Fractals are too much, I predict it'll be way too chaotic for me.

And then the selling/dismantling of remaining rare gear can finally begin, thanks to all the advice! Finally a clean bank except for all those bloodstone dust stacks because I haven't made an ascdended item yet, but I can live with that. Maybe it comes in time.

Looking forward to this weekend! :)

Engi + Turrets is definitely my favourite fun, lazy-mode build. Best of luck!

Engi+turrets and necro+minions is why the leather farm in lake Doric is now bombarded with siege.

Whooooosh, a cold breeze is blowing through my bank..... my nearly empty bank! :)I spent all evening and half night to divide the rares between the toons so it fits the way I want the toons to be specced. And the rest of the rares is now finally dismantled or sold.My bank is so empty now it almost feels uncomfortable :) Never had an empty bank since short after release of GW2.

Thanks again everyone for all advice!I'll spend rest of the night focusing on the traits, spec and stuff. At least my bank is clean again!

Have a great weekend everyone,

• Grampybone

Hey, here some way of build crafting I enjoy from time to time...

I search out a theme for the class I want to build on, sometimes it's something generell like for example a "life steal-build" and sometimes it's a build circling around one trait or mechanic (I just finished a soulbeast build working with the master trait lifesteal on applying poison. Or some hammer /mace mace - CC - Build on war.I even had an arcane condi burn elementalist with over 30k burn ticks at peak.Or I see possibilities for a warrior build focusing heavily on his burst abilities, so I slot all the traits and utilities that improve that...In general I start with the traits and the utilities. After I have traits and utilities and the fitting weapon I will most of the time try to get the fitting gear..some builds tend to be on either the power or the condi side, few of them require both stats...And then I play it. Keep in mind that, like mentioned before, some places in group content will have build requirements, so knowing how to play "the Meta" and having an extra weapon and armour set with you, if you do group content, is polite, because you will be less of a pain to run with (no offense, I don't even raid myself)

Thank you for your reply DerJoker! Yes in for example WoWarcraft I'd focus my gear on whatever I'd like to try out. In GW2 experimenting is a bit more expensive. Yesterday I got my Gryphon, which ate most of my gold omnomnom :). I think my real problem is that I want to play too many professions. I love all of them but I should focus on a few, especially the least traditional professions. These are most interesting, but maybe most complex? I'll see. :)

As a general rule of thumb, you want to go pure offense unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise. Resist the urge to fall into the traditional MMO roles of DPS, Healer or Tank. Outside of a few specific encounters, those roles do not exist in GW2. Instead, roles in GW2 mainly focus on proving maximum damage output while providing just enough personal defense and group support to survive the encounter.

The chart Greener linked is a very good reference to compare the relative offense/defense ratio of stat sets – and I’ll refer to that throughout my discussion here. It doesn’t include some of the newer stat combos, but you’ll need to progress pretty far into the game before you need to concern yourself with those – so don’t worry about them to begin with.

Use the top line of that chart as your “ideal” goal. For a new character, pick between either full Berserker or full Sinister as your “ideal target”. If you use a lot of condition damage, you will ideally want to use pure Sinister. If you use little to no condition damage, you will want to ideally use pure Berserker. Assassin or Rampager gear is typically something you’ll want to mix in with Berserker/Sinister gear if (and I emphasize IF) you need to boost precision. General rule of thumb: once your base critical hit chance – without food, buffs, etc. – gets above 70%, you’re probably good on precision. Most builds will start with Berserker/Sinister, then (once you get to level 80 and get into LWS2 content) throw in a few Assassin/Rampager pieces to top-off your precision, as needed.

Using a combination of those stats will maximize your damage output, which is generally what you want to do in most encounters.

IDEALLY: you don’t want to use any stat sets below the top tier on that chart.

REALISTICALLY: many players are going to have to mix in at least a few gear pieces with some toughness and vitality. Valkyrie/Carrion/Rabid gear is a pretty good “second best” alternative, which provides a notable defensive cushion with an acceptable loss of offense. If you constantly feel like “I would have survived if I could have taken one more hit…”, then you should mix in a few pieces from these stat sets.

And remember that you do NOT have to use the same stat set on every piece of gear. Overcome your OCD inclinations and embrace mixing different stats across your gear to achieve the exact offense/defense mix you want. For example, I typically start with full Valkyrie, Carrion or Rabid gear to give myself a little extra cushion while learning a new profession; then swap individual pieces out for Berserker or Sinister gear as I start to get more comfortable.

In my opinion, going below the second tier on that chart only makes sense in VERY SPECIFIC circumstances. Soldier/Forsaken/Apostate/Dire gear is a tempting choice as a “balanced” stat set, but the damage loss is so extreme that it almost always outweighs the added defense, except in the VERY rare cases when you really do need to assume the role of a true “tank” character (and even then, you’ll probably want to dive even deeper to Nomad or Giver stats).

You can pretty much ignore anything below the fourth tier of that chart (and I’d argue that even the third and fourth tier should be taken with extreme prejudice, outside of WvW), unless you REALLY, REALLY know what you’re doing and are making a VERY SPECIFIC niche build for a VERY SPECIFIC encounter.

With all that taken into consideration… your choices are fairly limited…

If you want to focus on power, then you ideally want full Berserker gear. If you need to boost your critical hit chance, then add just enough Assassin’s pieces to bring it to 70%. If you feel a bit too “squishy,” then swap a few gear pieces down one tier to Valkyrie.

If you want to focus on condition damage, then you ideally want full Sinister gear. If you need to boost your critical hit chance, then add just enough Rampager’s pieces to bring it to 70%. If you feel a bit too “squishy,” then swap a few gear pieces down one tier to Carrion or Rabid.

Zealot, Captain and Giver are a little more niche – don’t use these unless you REALY know exactly why you want to do so.

Anything below the second tier, I would really question. Knight and Cavalier may look temping with the large defense boost, but the associative loss of offense is crippling. And Celestial gear is very expensive for the minimal benefit it provides. With Soldier/Forsaken/Apostate/Dire: you’re taking a 60% damage reduction, which is far too great in my opinion.

In the few edge cases where you really have to drink the Kool Aid and go all-in on defense – you should cut to the chase and skip right to full Nomad or Giver gear. Go Giver if you’re going to be providing any boons to your party (highly recommended), otherwise go Nomad if you want to go full-on meat-shield tank-mode (strongly discouraged, outside a few edge cases).

As far as acquiring gear: crafting your own gear is cheaper, but more time consuming; purchasing gear from the trading post is significantly faster, but (significantly, in some cases) more costly. In any case, gear you get from loot should almost always be salvaged or sold to the trading post unless it is a very clear upgrade to one of your existing pieces.

In summary (for 90+% of the game’s content):

• Shoot for full Berserker (power) or Sinister (condition) as your ideal baseline• Add Assassin or Rampager pieces as need to boost your critical hit chance• Add Valkyrie, Carrion or Rabid pieces as needed to boost your defense• Everything else is niche• Salvage or sell any non-Ascended gear, unless it is an upgrade for one of your characters

Whoa thanks alot Maximus for the detailed info! this will be of great help.I'm working all my toons through the story/season content up to PoF. Bought some gold for gems for Griffon, then regret I bought gold for Griffon after seeing the achievements needed lol :) But I got my mount now, it's done.

Meanwhile I leveled all crafting to 500 (Jewelry/Cook 400). I collected so much though my PvE playtime these years that I could level, sell the wares without losing alot of gold.

When all my toons are done with story/season and it's rewards, I'll replace the remaining rare equipment slots with exotics that fit my build. All this info has been a huge help!Ascended will be something for the future I think, but at least I know now what to choose.

Celestial and Wupwup looked very interesting for me as well, making me a jack of all trades to experiment (which probably is bad :)). I won't be playing Fractals or raids, hopefully dungeons in the future so it might be an option. The lack of dodging (2 stamina bars) got me into trouble in Berserker for some professions but I'm learning. There's more options to avoid damage, just didn't know about it.And mixing gear types is a good option.And yes as a stubborn autist I'd love to get my gear of one type, but luckily Arenanet added the wardrobe. So if mix I'll put on a suit :) Problem solved :) Grenth's suit is my favourite.

Your post is detailed, very, very usefull. Thanks again Maximus and everyone, I learnt alot about the game just by this topic. Feels like I wasted lots of time (although I enjoyed playing) wondering what to choose, what to sell/dismantle. Now I can finally focus on the game.

@Grampybone.3716 said:Thank you for your reply DerJoker! Yes in for example WoWarcraft I'd focus my gear on whatever I'd like to try out. In GW2 experimenting is a bit more expensive. Yesterday I got my Gryphon, which ate most of my gold omnomnom :). I think my real problem is that I want to play too many professions. I love all of them but I should focus on a few, especially the least traditional professions. These are most interesting, but maybe most complex? I'll see. :)

Hey man.If you have trouble getting the gear in a cheap way, try the dungeon armors you can buy with dungeon tokens. There is something for every situation, and although it might not fit perfectly, it will allow you to gear that character up and get an idea of how it would play. If you really like the playstyle, you can still buy some better fitting armour pieces.Also, finishing 8 different dungeon parts rewards you with 5 gold and even more dungeon tokens. That reward is repeatable and easily doable within a few days.Add the karma vendors in Orr, and you have an easy way of getting gear for thematic builds you want to try out.Most of the dungeon runs take less than 15 minutes to do, and award some silver/1 gold...

I usually take 45 to 60 mins a day to run the easy parts of dungeons, just in case I want to have any new thematic build. The character I run them with, is in full ascended, meta gear, though and has the proper build :)

Hi DerJoker,I'm still enjoying the outside world content. Especially Auric Basin, I love those chain events, and then the big fight with the chests...So I'm slowly getting exotic drops, and I'm also able to make them myself, and the seasonal/story give me stuff as well.

I'm not ready for dungeons yet, I'd feel bad if I fail the group. I solo'd the first dungeon (Ascalon dungeon?) untill the lovers bossfight with my mesmer, then got tired of running back over and over :) So first I want to collect some good stuff, make a decent build that feels good when playing and then watch playthroughs of dungeons so I know about the events that will happen.

Meanwhile I'll keep enjoying the good stuff GW2 offers. For me the game is a huge playground, maybe lots of repeatables but there's so much it's always fun to log in.I can join a group event without needing to join a group, when players go down we help each other up no matter who. I barely had any negative experience in my GW2 years, while for WoW the negative experiences was the reason I'm not playing it anymore. but enough WoW comparisons.

I'll hope to do my first dungeons in the near future when I feel a bit better about my gear, and the advice I got from all players in this thread has been immense helpfull. I have all my toons in PoF storyline now, some finished it, and they rest I'm working on. After that I'll replace the weaker items on my toons that still haven't been replaced by questing rewards, or don't have the stats I want them to have.

GW2 rocks, and thank you all!