Getting Ascended Gear

So i finally am full exotics on my soulbeast ranger. Plus two ascended rings from fractals.

A ton of guides online advised me to level leatherworking, which i did, but when i got one of the ascended gear recipes i realised that it will be extremely time consuming to get everything done.

So I am looking for advice on what is the optimal to progress from where i am right now, as i am still new to the game.

Getting fully ascended gear is one of the many goals of mine while playing guild wars 2.

Abit dated since its before pofBut as a Sb you want core or hot stats anyway.

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

Anybody that has crafted ascended gear with the expansion stats such as Seraph, plaguedoctor, or diviner knows if it's cheaper than crafting the other combinations?

Leatherworker is ridiculously expensive because of leather prices being way out of whack compared to cloth or metal, so anything that can reduce the cost should be taken into consideration.

I am thinking that maybe crafting one of the newer sets and then stat swapping would be a lot cheaper since then the insignia doesn't need leather to be acquired.

By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

Doing alot of either will give you the currencies you need to buy ascended pieces (some of which can even be upgraded to tier 3) and the only thing you'll really have to craft are the crafting-profession specific tokens.

Playing WvW and PvP will get you these tokens at a slow rate, so leveling up a discipline is a good way to speed that process along.

The tokens themselves are mostly made from materials found in your loot anyway, so you only pay for the increased rate of completion, or if you're like me simply pour all your earnings into getting it really fast.

@Skotlex.7580 said:Anybody that has crafted ascended gear with the expansion stats such as Seraph, plaguedoctor, or diviner knows if it's cheaper than crafting the other combinations?

Leatherworker is ridiculously expensive because of leather prices being way out of whack compared to cloth or metal, so anything that can reduce the cost should be taken into consideration.

I am thinking that maybe crafting one of the newer sets and then stat swapping would be a lot cheaper since then the insignia doesn't need leather to be acquired.

For Seraph and Plaguedoctor you could theorectically save a bit by not having to craft the exotic insignia but that is not really the case.

The Plaguedoctor exotic insignia cost 1250 volatile magic which is worth at least 3g, this leaves you in the negative.

With Seraph you save maybe a bit but after factoring in the 5 ectos you still end up in the negative.

@rng.1024's suggestion makes a much bigger difference. Crafting a medium chest piece cost between 54g and 72g versus 37g for 4 grandmaster leatherworker marks. That is a saving of 17g to 35g

If money is not issue. You can buy timegated materials from TP (spiritwood planks etc.). Using marks shoul cost less then normal crafting but it uses more timegated materials and content specific currency.For weapons, go with knight of the thorns achievment and specialization collection (then you dont need to level crafting)Trinkets from laurel vendors, fractals or ls3 maps.

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

I'll echo this. I have 5 players fully geared in ascended, and of all that armor, I'd estimate 85% of it was purchased with Grandmaster Marks + currency either from the Fractal vendor or the WvW vendor. Weapons are mostly from Spec Collections, crafted or ascended chests, with one coming from WvW reward track.

I generally craft 4-6 pieces of ascended gear per week, so I can tell you it doesn't take all that long if you farm the mats from the LS3 maps. Even if you only use one toon it shouldn't take more than 2-3 weeks I would think.

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

I disagree on the basis of time spent. Aside from lucky drops, the time spent in any of those games modes to earn a single piece, you could have farmed enough gold to purchase multiple instead.

Read Tanetris's guide (it's what I used) - assuming your aim is to do fractals, my recommendation on order would be:

Trinkets - including infusion and attunement on rings. LW3 is easiest.Weapons - look at what gives you most bang for your buck. I did weaponsmith first (great sword/axes/daggers), then artificer. PoF collections are easy alternative, and HoT completion also gets you some nice rewards.Armor last, you only need it once in T4, by that point you may have changed your mind on profession.

Don't worry about taking LW already, you'll likely end up maxing all crafts anyway over time.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

That's a fair point, and while the OP did ask for the optimal method, it comes down to comfort level. I personally hate farming gold full time, though I have no reservation doing metas or RIBA once and awhile. I do agree that if you have the gold, buying the material you need to craft ascended components is the fastest method, and you will be able to farm up gold faster than you would fractal pages or WvW currency because it isn't time gated (or at least Istan didn't used to be) the way either fractals or WvW/PvP is.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

Note that all of these sources (except WvW) are among the top 10 big earners in the game, meaning you get gold + the things needed for your gear. Also the tokens amass to less than outright buying insignias, meaning it will cost you less.

I agree though raids for instance require alot of effort, but doing fractal dailies net you 40 gold in 1,5 hours, PvP 100 gold in 4-5 days and WvW really helps on the material side. I never said 1 of the options were the most efficient - doing the required amount in all of them during say, one week, would be.

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

All of those ways are farming gold. Not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

You disagreed about time spent - which is why I pointed out running Istan constantly f.ex will net you a little extra gold yes, but not enough to cover the gap from buying the token armor to crafting (especially given you get 3 of them for free in PvP and 1 every 2 weeks of WvW), meaning you won't get the armor faster by spending the same amount of time in Istan.

For fractal dailies to be 40 gold in 1.5 hours you'd have to have ascended+ and infusions in every slot.

For someone BUILDING their first ascended set, Fractals will not be really helpful until a significant number of ascended pieces.

Although, I understand the relics / marks issue. Still, I dunno, it is a personal thing obviously but I feel like it is a waste to spend on mark purchases until Fractal God.

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

You’ve been referring to things in days and in weeks. This is pretty ambiguous and meaningless. How many hours invested in those “days”? How many hours invested in those “weeks”?

In your original post you stated that obtaining ascended gear from fractals, raids, WvW, and PvP were the most cost efficient which is untrue. You’re ignoring the number of hours one must invest to obtain the armor. You also were referring to gear obtained directly from those areas of the game such as drops or through their respective currencies.

The fact is that you’ll obtain gear quicker by just farming the gold and then crafting it than you would trying to spend the time grinding currencies for it. Time spent doing something has a cost which was what I was getting at.

You specifically called out armor in your post. Most weights can be crafted with a cost of about 400G if you buy the materials off the TP to avoid the timegate. Maybe a little more but it doesn’t matter. You can farm the gold for this to craft an entire set than you would to farm the currencies to purchase an entire set.

Edit:

For WvW, assuming you earn 14 pips (being very generous), it would take you nearly 31 hours across 3.5 weeks. Spending those hours farming gold instead will earn you 619G if earning 20G/hr which is very doable. This is enough to craft the armor and weapons. Definitely so if you use the three weeks and do the daily timegated refinements instead of buying all directly off the TP.

For sPvP, assuming you earn 10 pips a match, it would take you 24 hours assuming that you also average earning those pips every 7 minutes which is unrealistic. You also only earn 3 grandmaster marks from what I have seen so you still need to craft. Doing this will take much longer than simply farming the gold and crafting it. All of those extra hours spent is a waste and adds to the cost.

For fractals you need 88 research pages for an entire armor set. A new person is unlikely to get them from CM’s. So expect to earn three a day which will take you well over 25 hours in total. You’re still better off farming gold and you’d probably earn enough gold from playing fractals to just craft a set before you got enough currency to buy one. Never mind that you still need to obtain the marks to purchase them too.

For raids, you need 1300 magnetite shards in order to purchase an entire set. You can earn 150 per week with the chance for more if you get lucky. That’s about 8.5 weeks and you can expect to spend a couple hours a week completing everything. This isn’t something you’d expect new players to accomplish.

Unless you have gold then it will take a while. I did my first one piece by piece and it was my rangers Zerker set so I feel the pain of buying that leather. But it does take time, you can't stop that..be it hoping for chest drops, doing PvP or WvW (which you still need time gated mats anyway) . I had to do it the hard way, waiting on my time gates and farming the gold for other Mats.Now I do my time gates every day and use https://gw2efficiency.com/ ...this is a wonderful site, tells you the cost of each piece of armour and weapons, what to buy etc. I also get my Vision crystals ready if i'm planning a set and use karma to get the Obi shards that you need.
If you have season 3 Maps then it does pay to do the gathering and dailes there, especially bitterfrost. You can get Ascended Backpacks, earrings, rings and underwater helms. Places such a Siren's Landing and Lake doric for your necklaces, Ember Bay for a second earring, Bloodstone for a ring. Don't forget however that you can infuse a ring and be able to wear the same sort (which I did with my grievers set).I find doing weapons a bit easier than the armour, as you can gather elder wood and ingots as you play.Don't give up on fractals, wvw or even worlds bosses such as Tequatl, as you still could get a chest to help you on your way.Just don't worry about how long it going to take, the first one is always the longest in my opinion.

@Shivvies.3921 said:Although, I understand the relics / marks issue. Still, I dunno, it is a personal thing obviously but I feel like it is a waste to spend on mark purchases until Fractal God.Lol, the amount of material needed for that enhancement is so large, spending a few hundred relics and a few dozen pages here or there won't make much of a difference.

You are either a CM+T4 daily player who will get Fractal God in just under a year, or you will be working towards that goal for several years.

In either case, I prioritized:Ascended GearInfinite PotionsAd InfinitumFractal account enhancements

But that was just my strategy, YMMV

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@"Shivvies.3921" said:Although, I understand the relics / marks issue. Still, I dunno, it is a personal thing obviously but I feel like it is a waste to spend on mark purchases until Fractal God.Lol, the amount of material needed for that enhancement is so large, spending a few hundred relics and a few dozen pages here or there won't make much of a difference.

I was actually not replying to you. It is not you, though, I wasn't clear.

What I'm saying, in a very convoluted way, is getting ascended gear from fractals on your first character is cool if you love fractals and doing low levels of them a looooong time. The gold is NOT going to be a lot until you already have a good amount of ascended gear fitted with +9 AR infusions.

In brief, I was sort of supporting Ayrilana in their argument that "you can make enough gold from gold farming methods" versus rng's argument that "fractals are already good gold" as in "fractals are not good gold until you are already geared."

Cheers!

@Shivvies.3921 said:

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Shivvies.3921 said:Although, I understand the relics / marks issue. Still, I dunno, it is a personal thing obviously but I feel like it is a waste to spend on mark purchases until Fractal God.Lol, the amount of material needed for that enhancement is so large, spending a few hundred relics and a few dozen pages here or there won't make much of a difference.

Er, I wasn't replying to you either....wait wut, we all confused here lol.

I was replying to @Shivvies.3921 comment about not wanting to "waste" fractal currency until at least after you've obtained Fractal God B)

But to your post, I agree fully, as Fractals don't reward sufficient gold until you're in T4, and by the time you're there, you won't need the gold to by crafting mats because you get fractal weapon / armor chests to drop pretty regularly; I have 16 of them sitting in my bank....

No the fastest method would be to farm a high gold per hour activity such as silverwastes, Istan (still, I think?), Karka shell or leather farming, whatever poison you prefer, and then buy all the components you need to craft the ascended components.

That method still costs MORE resources than if you were to farm fractals for pages and relics, but it is FASTER, as you aren't limited on farming gold the way you are on the amount of fractal pages per day, etc.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

Let me clarify:

• Random drops are not included.
• If you play WvW following a comm (and assuming you have some experience) you can easily max out on pips at the end of the weekend.
• Then there are fractals, which (again given some experience) shouldn't take up more than 2 hours a day.
• Playing PvP for a few hours at a time with 50% winrate will take you to the last chest in about 4 days (just did that)
• Raids I'm not even going to comment on but if you have a solid group that runs once a week you're set.

What I'm trying to get at is that if you reach the pip/pages/shard cap during 1 week in addition to the materials (assuming you salvage everything) and raw gold this provides, you will get your sets faster than by purely goldfarming. Notice how, say you spend the weekend in WvW, do fractals every day, play PvP throughout the workdays and raid 1 of these days you still have the uptime to farm if you so like.

But anyways, playing these modes pays by themselves the cost of the armor and you can speed the process up by burning your own gold (think in terms designated armor materials like Memory of Battle) - you get that for free instead of having to spend 2 hours in Istan, that's 2 more hours to PvP which is enough to give you another grandmaster mark, which means you now can spend those doing daily fractals for free money and even some pages on top of that. What you posit is that Istan is 100% more profitable than any other source, but as long as the mark to Istan gold limit minus other source do not exceed the cost of marks, then it will be the most profitable method.

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

• Random drops are not included.

I never said that they were?

• If you play WvW following a comm (and assuming you have some experience) you can easily max out on pips at the end of the weekend.

Again. "End of the weekend", and everything else like it, is ambiguous. I can say that I farmed for a week and was able to buy a legendary weapon off the TP. How many hours did I spend? Ten? Twenty-five? Fifty? Getting a moderate 20G per hour from a farm only takes 30 hours to get 600G. This is more than enough to level a craft to 500 and then buy the mats to immediate craft the ascended armor. How many hours are spent in WvW over that weekend?

What you're not getting is the total hours spent doing WvW to obtain an ascended set is considerably higher than it would take to just farm the gold and craft it. This is what makes crafting the much better route. Sure you may end up with less cost in materials but time does have a value.

• Then there are fractals, which (again given some experience) shouldn't take up more than 2 hours a day.

You're assuming that anyone can just start fractals and immediately do T4 including CM. That's not the case and especially is they're in full exotic with two ascended rings. Even then, the total hours spent to get enough "currency" is considerably higher as well compared to just farming the gold to craft the gear outright.

• Playing PvP for a few hours at a time with 50% winrate will take you to the last chest in about 4 days (just did that)

And again you're not taking into consideration of the total hours spent to obtain a full set of ascended armor this way. You earn 400 shards by the time you get the final chest which means that you need to do three seasons if done that way as you described. If you spent three hours a night over four days, this would put it at 12 hours per season or 36 hours for a full set. You're still better off farming gold. I also find 12 hours a season far-fetched with how long queue times can be and how long matches typically take but whatever

• Raids I'm not even going to comment on but if you have a solid group that runs once a week you're set.

As with the other sections I just addressed, you're ignoring *total hours spent. Actually, come to think of it, I have been repeating what I said in my previous post which you had quoted.

What I'm trying to get at is that if you reach the pip/pages/shard cap during 1 week in addition to the materials (assuming you salvage everything) and raw gold this provides, you will get your sets faster than by purely goldfarming. Notice how, say you spend the weekend in WvW, do fractals every day, play PvP throughout the workdays and raid 1 of these days you still have the uptime to farm if you so like.

Not likely, but even if it were true, it wouldn't apply to the OP. Fractals require you to have full ascended. Raids groups typically prefer you to have ascended and getting into a consistent full clear groups immediately is far-fetched. WvW and sPvP are options but botch take quite a bit of time. You need to take into total hours spent doing all of these and calculate how much gold per hour you would make had you farmed gold.

But anyways, playing these modes pays by themselves the cost of the armor and you can speed the process up by burning your own gold (think in terms designated armor materials like Memory of Battle) - you get that for free instead of having to spend 2 hours in Istan, that's 2 more hours to PvP which is enough to give you another grandmaster mark, which means you now can spend those doing daily fractals for free money and even some pages on top of that. What you posit is that Istan is 100% more profitable than any other source, but as long as the mark to Istan gold limit minus other source do not exceed the cost of marks, then it will be the most profitable method.

Two hours in Istan is about 60G and a grandmaster mark is worth 12 gold. So which one is more worth it?

The point of all this is that you're trying to point out things as being the most efficient when they're really not.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

• Random drops are not included.

• If you play WvW following a comm (and assuming you have some experience) you can easily max out on pips at the end of the weekend.

• Then there are fractals, which (again given some experience) shouldn't take up more than 2 hours a day.

• Playing PvP for a few hours at a time with 50% winrate will take you to the last chest in about 4 days (just did that)

• Raids I'm not even going to comment on but if you have a solid group that runs once a week you're set.

What I'm trying to get at is that if you reach the pip/pages/shard cap during

1 week

in addition to the materials (assuming you salvage everything) and raw gold this provides, you will get your sets faster than by purely goldfarming. Notice how, say you spend the weekend in WvW, do fractals every day, play PvP throughout the workdays and raid 1 of these days you still have the uptime to farm if you so like.

But anyways, playing these modes pays by themselves the cost of the armor and you can speed the process up by burning your own gold (think in terms designated armor materials like Memory of Battle) - you get that for free instead of having to spend 2 hours in Istan, that's 2 more hours to PvP which is enough to give you another grandmaster mark, which means you now can spend those doing daily fractals for free money and even some pages on top of that. What you posit is that Istan is 100% more profitable than any other source, but as long as the mark to Istan gold limit minus other source do not exceed the cost of marks, then it will be the most profitable method.

Again, I'm going to point this out one last time - it's not 1 mode, it's all of them. The time not spent progressing them are free to be used in Istan. Also please read more carefully as I stated experienced WvW players (who know friday is reset and that a weekend ends on Sunday - time spent doesn't even matter as long as you finish it before monday which gives alot of leeway to do some fractals and rl things) and Fractals (did you know you can easily do 50+ without agony resistance, that there is a cheap potion to give you some and ascended accessories drop like rain?).

I never said they were more profitable than Istan mind you. What I said is they cover some of the cost of the armor/weapon, meaning you need less time to farm. Farming gold is by all means the most efficient way to get gold, but buying your ascended allow you to skip out on tp costs and even get 1 piece for free(!) every season of PvP, meaning already there 17% of the cost is gone. Same goes for pages. Same goes for WvW. However I can agree that getting a piece for every time unit is slightly higher in Istan - meaning more efficient - but it's the "free" pieces you get inbetween in the other modes that tip the scale. Remember you also get loot in the other modes - you need to take Istan hour value minus that loot in order to get the actual ratio of how profitable Istan is in this argument.

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@rng.1024 said:By far the most cost efficient way is to simply play Fractals, Raids, PvP and WvW.

• Random drops are not included.

• If you play WvW following a comm (and assuming you have some experience) you can easily max out on pips at the end of the weekend.

• Then there are fractals, which (again given some experience) shouldn't take up more than 2 hours a day.

• Playing PvP for a few hours at a time with 50% winrate will take you to the last chest in about 4 days (just did that)

• Raids I'm not even going to comment on but if you have a solid group that runs once a week you're set.

What I'm trying to get at is that if you reach the pip/pages/shard cap during

1 week

in addition to the materials (assuming you salvage everything) and raw gold this provides, you will get your sets faster than by purely goldfarming. Notice how, say you spend the weekend in WvW, do fractals every day, play PvP throughout the workdays and raid 1 of these days you still have the uptime to farm if you so like.

But anyways, playing these modes pays by themselves the cost of the armor and you can speed the process up by burning your own gold (think in terms designated armor materials like Memory of Battle) - you get that for free instead of having to spend 2 hours in Istan, that's 2 more hours to PvP which is enough to give you another grandmaster mark, which means you now can spend those doing daily fractals for free money and even some pages on top of that. What you posit is that Istan is 100% more profitable than any other source, but as long as the mark to Istan gold limit minus other source do not exceed the cost of marks, then it will be the most profitable method.

It doesn't matter. If all of them are slower than farming gold then doing all of them doesn't magically make them faster. Farming ore, farming crafting mats, and dungeons are each slower than Istan. Doing all three doesn't magically make you earn more than Istan. It all comes down to hours spent which is why those will still remain slower and why farming for gold to craft ascended will be faster. This is especially in the OP's case.

Also please read more carefully as I stated experienced WvW players (who know friday is reset and that a weekend ends on Sunday - time spent doesn't even matter as long as you finish it before monday which gives alot of leeway to do some fractals and rl things) and Fractals (did you know you can easily do 50+ without agony resistance, that there is a cheap potion to give you some and ascended accessories drop like rain?).

The OP isn't an experienced WvW based on their post. Experienced in this case would be someone with high WvW rank as blindly following a commander doesn't require any skill. Hours spent does matter when it comes to efficiency. If farming for gold gets someone to ascended quicker then doing anything else would be inefficient.

I never said they were more profitable than Istan mind you. What I said is they cover some of the cost of the armor/weapon, meaning you need less time to farm. Farming gold is by all means the most efficient way to get gold, but buying your ascended allow you to skip out on tp costs and even get 1 piece for free(!) every season of PvP, meaning already there 17% of the cost is gone. Same goes for pages. Same goes for WvW. However I can agree that getting a piece for every time unit is slightly higher in Istan - meaning more efficient - but it's the "free" pieces you get inbetween in the other modes that tip the scale. Remember you also get loot in the other modes - you need to take Istan hour value minus that loot in order to get the actual ratio of how profitable Istan is in this argument.

You said they were more efficient in a previous post which prompted this. The loot in those other modes, combined with the currencies, don't make them faster. One exception being high level fractals as you can earn 40G+ with a coordinated group doing all dailies and CM's. However, this doesn't apply to the OP.

@Xuto.6803 said:So i finally am full exotics on my soulbeast ranger. Plus two ascended rings from fractals.

A ton of guides online advised me to level leatherworking, which i did, but when i got one of the ascended gear recipes i realised that it will be extremely time consuming to get everything done.

So I am looking for advice on what is the optimal to progress from where i am right now, as i am still new to the game.

Getting fully ascended gear is one of the many goals of mine while playing guild wars 2.

I will reiterate the advice you already had from Ayrilana.1396: Gather gold and craft your ascendant armor by yourself. You say you are new in the game. That means you still have a lot of new things to discover - maps/events/world bosses. Take your time and gather everything you find during your map explorations.With a little bit of luck you may capture something valuable during your journeys. Do your daily. Slowly but steady you will be able to raise your crafting skill to 500. And even then you will still have many things to discover. You still can do fractals (with the 2 ascendant rings you can reach lvl 30 I think?).

As a conclusion - don't rush the things. This game is not ending tomorrow. Although not a very enjoyable activity, the crafting is still worth leveling to 500, because you can use it for the rest of the game.

If you step into WvW and you have the mental strength to complete the diamond tier every week, then after acquiring the ascendant armor you can make a further effort to gather enough Skirmish Tickets for the Legendary armour. In this way you solve the problem with the medium armors. But you still need crafting - for the leatherwork marks. No matter how you look at the problem if you don't want to wait for a random ascendant drop you must level your crafting to 500 first.