How to start ascended gear?

Hi everyone,

I want to start my ascendant gear but I'm afraid to waste gold and material in the wrong way. I want a Ranger to play open world and WvW.Is a good idea to I start buying the ascended trinkets in vendor? Or buy material do put leatherworking to 500 first?

What is the best way to use my resources (gold and material) to have my ascended set complete?

You should start with accessories by farming Bitterfrost Glacier in Living World Episode 3. This episode alone is 200 gems I believe, but so totally worth it! Rings and earrings are unique and you can have only one unique item of the same type per hero, so the rest of those should be bought with laurels from vendors located in capital cities. Laurels you get as a login reward so even if you don't have enough now, you will eventually receive enough as you play each day.

Since you specifically asked for armor, not weapons, gonna leave that one out. For gear, you might want to do some fractals and slowly build agony resistance to run higher tier ones. This is probably the best way to get ascended items and any drops with stats which you don't like can be reforged in the mystic forge to make them more desirable.

I've made the mistake of leveling armorcrafting skills because I thought it's easy gear. Not worth it. Armorcrafting disciplines are nice to fill any gap to get a full ascended set, but not for making all of them. I'd level those disciplines only if I have enough gold while focusing on fractals. Weaponsmithing, huntsman and artificing are way better investments since the weapons will offer more significant boost overall.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Tanetris/So_You_Want_To_Gear_a_Character

If it eventually boils down to crafting your items (I also recommend farming LW S3 maps for the trinkets, it's worth the toil), I recommend getting your weapon(s) out of the way first, then in terms of armor, work from most expensive to least expensive: chest, pants, helm, then gloves/shoulders/boots.

However, you should only go for the crafts when you both have the coin and materials to pull it off. I will side with EpicName on this behalf -- there's other means to get what you're missing, and it doesn't involve crafts. Still, having a 500 in your desired weapon and armor weight crafts won't hurt in lifting some of the burden.

And there's the off-case you will get ascended weapon/armor boxes. If you get stats you don't want, you can make an inscription/insignia with the stats you DO want, get some ecto, and buy an Anthology of Heroes -- and put those three + the item with undesirable stats into the Mystic Forge. You'll get an item with stats you will use.

Also a word of warning: trinkets are unique. You can have an attuned trinket and an infused trinket of the same stats on you. You cannot, however, have two attuned or two infused trinkets of the same stats. Or two trinkets of the same name, if you used laurels. The only exception is if the trinket does not say "Unique" on it. Then you can use a pair. So far, the only kind of trinket I ran across that doesn't have "Unique" on it are the ones you can buy with fractals currency.

Trinkets in LS3 maps. Map completing each of these gives you a nice bonus in currency . Use Winterberries and Orrian Pearls for the unbound.Backpeice for Karma in Siren's Landing if you have a nice bunch of Karma to spend.If you are running a melee weaponset, do the Knight of the Thorn events to reforge Caladbolg for your first Ascended weapon.Then slowly work on crafting your armor.

Honestly I would skip Ascended armour if your only option is crafting. Not worth the hassle in time or cost. The upgrade over Exotic is minimal.

The biggest upgrade comes from the weapon, then accessories anyway and those are much less of a PITA to acquire: crafting a weapon is less of a hassle than a full armour set and accessories are “free” via Living World maps, Fractals or what have you.

@mindcircus.1506 said:If you are running a melee weaponset, do the Knight of the Thorn events to reforge Caladbolg for your first Ascended weapon.

This. Caladbolg Orchida is the only GS I will never ever transmute, either to or from.

(That said, I have maxed out all crafts at least once. For reasons that I couldn't begin to guess, I did in fact max out Tailoring on two different characters, one of whom is also my max Huntsman.)

EDIT: Um. All crafts except Scribe. I have no scribes.

As mentioned earlier, Weapons > Armor in terms of crafting. A weapon costs around 50 gold and gives a direct boost to you dmg and a boost to the stats compared to exotic and lower armor. Each piece of armor will cost you also around 50 gold and will only give a stat boost, which is also different per piece, gloves have lower stats then chests for example.

Trinkets can be acquired through numerous ways. The best way is to exchange winterberry's for them (as already mentioned). But you can get them for laurels, (An Amulet for 30 laurels, Rings for 35 and accessories for 40+50ectoplasm (all quite expensive tbh)). You can get accessories for guild commendations(12 + 5g) and rings from fractals (you can play up to fractal level 20 without needing agony, so you can get the currency that way).https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_trinket for a full list.

Armor and Weapons are only available as loot, or from crafting.So if you want to craft them you can check out this side: https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculatorIt will tell you which components are needed and how much you will have to pay for it and if it is cheaper to craft or to buy.Leveling tailor/armorsmith/etc can also be quite expensive (around 90 gold from level 0-500 I would assume) But there are sites that can tell you what you need.

I again stress that it's better that you'd craft ascended weapons than armor pieces not just for the cost factor, but the benefit factor. Gains on armor diminish really quick and it's not required unless you're really in the fractals business. Elonian leather is the most expensive component to make in terms of armor, only because the leathers prior are already hard to acquire. So unless you're 24/7ing Lake Doric or an equivalent leather farm (which to me seems masochistic), focus on your other equipment first.