Question about gearing characters

Hey guys ! So I have some fundamental questions about equipment.

Essentially, my issue started when I created new character, and looked at metabattle to test new builds.

I see a lot of streamers and players in general having multiple weapons types and builds on one character + 5 other well equipped alts.

• Where do they get so many weapons and armor with stats they want to gear all of them ?

• What should I set as a requirement before considering character "geared" for all end-game content like fractals/raids/dungeons etc ? in terms of sigils, rarity, etc

• What is the best approach of getting weapons and armor with stats I want ? TP/Dungeons/Crafting/ ?

@"FireBlade.3460" said:

• Where do they get so many weapons and armor with stats they want to gear all of them ?

Crafting is where most players get the weapons and armor with the stats they want. Some get them from fractal drops, but it's best to get them from crafting.

• What should I set as a requirement before considering character "geared" for all end-game content like fractals/raids/dungeons etc ? in terms of sigils, rarity, etc

See if your profession benefits a lot from either power or condition damage. Sites like Metabattle, Snow Crows and Qtfy show you plenty of builds that you can use for your profession. If you want to know what I mean by knowing if your profession benefits from power or condition damage, just look at the core engineer and holosmith builds. Holosmith is obviously better with power because of its' CC capabilities and core engineer is better with conditions.

• What is the best approach of getting weapons and armor with stats I want ? TP/Dungeons/Crafting/ ?

Crafting is a far better way of getting the weapons and armor want and it's also a nice way to level up your characters. Another thing you need to consider is what crafting disciplines benefit your profession. For example, if you're playing warrior, the crafting disciplines that this profession benefits the most is armorsmith and weaponsmith.

Check the wiki page for every profession and go to the crafting discipline section to see which ones your profession needs. In my opinion, you only need two primary crafting disciplines, one for crafting armor and one for crafting the weapons you like for your profession with cooking being your one and only secondary crafting discipline if you're planning on playing fractals and raids.

@"FireBlade.3460" said:

• What should I set as a requirement before considering character "geared" for all end-game content like fractals/raids/dungeons etc ? in terms of sigils, rarity, etc

For dungeons and even raids exotic gear is good enough. Having ascended gear is only really needed for higher tier fractals or if you want to maximise your dmg and quality of life, since ascended equipment is account bound.

• What is the best approach of getting weapons and armor with stats I want ? TP/Dungeons/Crafting/ ?

If you're going to buy weapons and armor from the TP, search for the stats you want and not the "prefix" (Berserker, Assassins etc). This is often way cheaper.

A character is fully geared for dungeons when you have all slots filled with exotic equipment. Fractals require ascended bacuase you need slots that can fit agony resistance. For raids most people consider their characters fully geared when they have all slots filled with ascended equipment, though raiding in exotic equipment is possible.

Ascended equipment cannot be bought from other players. The most reliable way to get ascended weapons and armour is by crafting them.

How to get ascended equipment:Rings:

• buy or drop in fractals
• buy on living season maps
• buy at laurel vendor

Amulet:

• buy on living season maps
• buy at wvw laurel vendor
• buy at laurel vendor

Accessories:

• buy on living season maps
• buy at guild vendor
• buy at laurel vendor

Backpack:

• buy on living season maps
• buy in fractals and craft into ascended

Weapons:

• complete an elite specialization collection
• craft

Armour:

• craft

! Not all vendors sell all stats. This makes some stat combinations more expensive than others.! Once you have enough raid currency, you can also get most equipment at that vendor.

I've sorted the equipment in the order what I think is easyest to aquire to what is hardest to aquire. The aquisition methods are sorted by what I believe to be cheapest. Since the value of different currencies is subjective though, there is a chance someone else would sort them differently.

Everyone else has already given really good answers but I'll add a few things:

If you know you're likely to have multiple characters and/or builds look out for exotic/ascended items with selectable stats or useful combinations and save them for when you need them. The Living Story meta-achievements usually give a piece of exotic equipment with selectable stats and others come from other achievements. Sometimes you can get an ascended armour/weapon box which lets you choose a piece from a few stat combinations. This is absolutely not a good way to fully gear a character as it would take a very long time to get a full set this way, but it can reduce the number of pieces you need to make or buy. If you want the 4-stat sets introduced with HoT and PoF it can save you quite a bit of gold.

However be careful of getting carried away with it. I recently had to be really strict with myself over my gear hording. I have 11 permanent characters, 3 of them already have ascended backpacks and 2 of the others aren't going to be level 80 for a long time. But for some reason I had 12 exotic backpacks in my bank, mostly the crafted ones which are very cheap and easy to make. There is absolutely no reason I'm going to need that many but I just got into the habit of keeping them.

Similarly don't get carried away with trying to get the best possible versions of everything. My ranger uses sinister stats on her weapons and her main weapons are ascended but her axe is an exotic beserkers one. It's not ideal but I use it once a year at Halloween and on rare occasions when I need reflects, so it's not worth the hassle of making an ascended (or even exotic) sinister one when I had a beserkers one for free.

one addition.

if you get drops with the "wrong" stats, you can use the mystig forge to craft the stats you want.ascended armor/weapon piece + globs of ecto + antology of heroes + exotic insignia/inscription of the stat you want.

(be carefull, dont use that method if you have a piece of pvp or wvw ascended armor, because once "re"crafted, it cannot be used to craft wvw/pvp legendary armor from it anymore)

Considering I haven't been active for a few years and with all the changes I consider myself a noob.

As such, the way I approach equipping my lv80s is this:

• get exotic armor with stats you want from the karma vendors in Orr (last map, don't know the name)
• get exotic weapons with dungeon tokens, so do dungeon runs (explo) daily ... if you need berserker gear, CoF is IDEAL and easy/fast
• after getting the right stats, transmute into whatever skin you want

@Kovac.4372 said:Considering I haven't been active for a few years and with all the changes I consider myself a noob.

As such, the way I approach equipping my lv80s is this:

• get exotic armor with stats you want from the karma vendors in Orr (last map, don't know the name)
• get exotic weapons with dungeon tokens, so do dungeon runs (explo) daily ... if you need berserker gear, CoF is IDEAL and easy/fast
• after getting the right stats, transmute into whatever skin you want

I was just about to come here and ask about this.

I'm ready to start LS2, have only been playing for 2 months soI don't have a lot of gold or crafting levels yet, and I was wondering what would be the best way to gear up. I did see a karma vendor with exotic gear in Orr that I can find again. I have a lot of karma saved up from playing thru the game, so I'm glad to read that this is a good option.

Do you need to group to run explo dungeons? I'm pretty much a soloer in all the MMOs I play. I'm an older (senior) gamer with an old, cranky gaming laptop and I don't like to derp things up for others.

@Kaliwenda.3428 said:I'm ready to start LS2, have only been playing for 2 months soI don't have a lot of gold or crafting levels yet, and I was wondering what would be the best way to gear up. I did see a karma vendor with exotic gear in Orr that I can find again. I have a lot of karma saved up from playing thru the game, so I'm glad to read that this is a good option.

Do you need to group to run explo dungeons? I'm pretty much a soloer in all the MMOs I play. I'm an older (senior) gamer with an old, cranky gaming laptop and I don't like to kitten things up for others.

For experienced dungeon runners you can get by with as few as 2, depending on the dungeon and mechanics. However those are extremely skilled players who understand all the mechanics and how to shortcut them wherever possible. If you have not done dungeons much, you definitely want to be in a group. Ideally some experienced guild members may be able to help teach you the various dungeons to help you progress faster and have patience with your skill and hardware limitations.

When running new characters I use the Orr karma vendors to equip my chars with a full exotic set. Depending on what you want, you may not be able to find stats for your optimal build, but it is a quick way to get up and running and then over time you can replace those pieces with whatever your idea is.

If you have them, LS3 & 4 maps are fantastic for buying ascended jewelry, back items & (much later/bottom priority) underwater breathers. Farming Winterberries in the Bitterfrost frontier is probably the fastest way to farm unbound magic (LS3 currency), to use in conjunction with the various map currencies for jewelry. IMHO bloodstone amulets/rings/back items are the very best for HoT stats because you can change the stats for practically nothing, but they are harder to get because rubies are difficult to farm (as far as I am aware) in any volume.

You can also buy amulets/rings/accessories from Laurel vendors. If you happen to do any WvW you can get a bit of a discount by buying in WvW and spending laurels + commendations.

Also, if/when you complete the HoT story, you can earn a free ascended weapon from a follow up story in current events. That particular weapon has the unique ability to be changed between 5 different weapon types which may give you a bit of flexibility.

Personally I start with a quick exotic armor set, then enough exotic weapons to do a weapon swap, then ascended trinkets then ascended weapons before ascended armor.

I got an exotic armour set from one of the Orr Karma vendors, had enough saved to get all but an accesory, and I should be able to go back and get that by the end of the day.

I started LS2 after watching a couple movies about LS1. Feels like great timing with the Festival of the Four Winds going on now too - at least I knew how to use the crystals right away!

As for dungeons, I might just look up videos of them to get the story for now and work up courage to dip into them myself someday. :)

@"Kaliwenda.3428" said:As for dungeons, I might just look up videos of them to get the story for now and work up courage to dip into them myself someday. :)

You can play the story modes and complete the "Dungeon Frequenter" achievement. This gets you 5g and dungeon tokens of your choice.Makes it easier/faster to get the stats or the skins you want .

Oh, thank you, I didn't realize that. :)

Gearing depends on the purpose; full dmg is not always the best choice for raids, wbosses, leveling. Use the wiki and build guides to see what ur gear should be and buy it from the tp, quick and easy if you play the game for some days. Topic leveling gear: The lvling rewards are good enough, dont waste gold here.

for PvE, generally keep a set of Ascended Berserker armor and a set of Viper armor for each armor class; unless you want to start venture into healer roles and PvP