Ascended Gear: How Much Time?

Does anyone have any idea how much time it would take to get ascended gear through each method? I've been looking and can't find anything. Just wanting to get it as quickly as possible. Currently, I'm doing my fractal dailies and PvP.PvP, WvW, Crafting, Fractals, etc.

If you want to get asc eq from fractals, you have to equip your character with an ascended gear, because chests with asc gear are from T4.Wiki says you need 1310 WvW tickets for full asc armor, and you can earn only 365 tickets per week. So you have to play WvW at least for 4 weeks.Crafting — there are 2 ways:

• Grandmaster's Marks (3 or 4 per piece — materials for 1 marks are worth around 10g in TP).
• Crafting everything — there are timegated materials, so it can take few days per piece if you don't want to buy e.g. Deldrimor Steel Ingots. You can ask someone to craft it for you, just send materials. Average cost for one piece of asc gear is around 40-50g.Here's list of materials requred for one asc set:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_crafting#Ascended_armor

I crafted mine over like a month and a half. There are some time gated account bound items you'll need to craft with materials that are also account bound so you can't just through gold at it.

Method 1:
Fastest way, hands down, is to craft them with bought materials. Takes about 30g-50g to max level an armor crafting type, and about 300g in bought materials. You'll also need 30g + karma for the initial recipes from Mastercrafters. Its also recommended that if you're going for HOT/POF stats, to craft a base set and use the mystic forge to convert them into the stats you want (costs another 6-10g per set, but saves you hours of farming for secondary mats and tokens). Depending on the time of year, Bones or Venom sacks tend to be the cheapest Fine mats; meaning Carrion and Rampagers are marginally cheaper options for this process. Bloods and Totems are notoriously expensive in the off seasons, since Bloods are used in Berserkers stats, and Totems are rare in the current farming routes.

You'll also need a large supply 1500 each of Bloodstone dust, Dragonite Ore, and Empyral Fragments. Plus a hand full of Obsidian Shards.Blood Dust: Champ bags, specific nodes in LS3, and specific chests in POF and LS4 Maps.
Dragonite: Gathered from specific LS3 nodes, World boss chests/Boss Metas, and WvW LordsEmpyreal: Looted from a large range of chests (JP, hidden chests, etc) and specific LS3 nodes.
Obishards are gotten from a few types of chests, but are mainly gotten in large volume from various vendors. Balth is temple the most direct, but karma loaded. However, the more popular option is Silverwastes RIBA trains, since the bandit chests in the map yield multiple materials you need. (Champ bags for dust and T6 mats, Empyreal fragments, and Obi shards as an uncommon level drop).

Pro-Tip: Rather then craft all the T7 mats from dailies, just buy Deldremore Ingots, Elonan leather, and Damask you need off the TP. Its a 15% markup over crafting yourself.... but you can make that 45 gold back in a week or so of daily farming fractals, HOT metas, etc.

Method 2:Craft everything yourself. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_crafting

"Using the numbers below, this means that crafting a complete set of ascended armor set take a minimum of 36 days for light and medium armor or 25 days for heavy armor (18 of which is used to make the insignias). Weapons require 5-7 days each (3 of which is used to make the inscription) depending on how the materials are spread out. " (wiki)

Generally the same as above, except you spend roughly a month doing daily ecto crafting for T7 intermediary mats (silk thread, spiritwood sap, mithrilium and elonian cord). Its HIGHLY recommended you craft these, even if you don't need them right away, in order to stock pile them for later use. I suggest having around 200 each of Leather, Cloth and Wood, and 300 in Metal. Also having 50-100 each Bloodstone bricks, Dragonite ingots, and Empyreal stars, since many newer crafting projects call for them at some point, and farming them takes time. If you have even minor plans for Legendary weapons or armor, you'll want to keep the Intermediary mats in the ecto-refinement form, since the refinement path for Method 3 is account bound and irreversible. This enables you choose what you need, when you need it, based on cost analysis.

Collectively, This is enough to cover any 2 Ascended/legendary projects at any time, and enough left over to dump some refined mats on the TP to make some quick money when prices spike. When new legendary weapons come out, Elderwood and Mithril ore usually double in price for a week and a half. Sell off gathered/salvaged mats in the hype train, and then back fill stuff in the off season when prices start to bottom out.

Method 3:Grandmaster Marks, Token exchange, and Legendary precursors.

This method makes time gates unavoidable, but allows you to use secondary currencies from other game modes to get a 10-15% discount in gold cost of a gear set. Note that WvW armor is more expensive, due to the high value of "Memories of Battle", and should only be used for Legendary armor crafting. PvP armor can also be used to make Legendary armor, but is a total pain in the ass due to how Ranked Play operates; IT IS NOT AN EASY OPTION.

Fractals is generally the most casual friendly option for cheaper Ascended gear, since the entire game mode is designed to feed into it as a progression model. Asc gear drops are relatively frequent (and by relatively, i mean only slightly more common), but the Fractal Tokens can be used in conjunction with Grandmaster marks (which requires crafting) to buy ascended armor sets and trinkets. Fractals dailies also generate the highest gold for effort of any activity in the game, and can be done in under an hour if you're not going for CMs.

Raid tokens are currently the only method to obtain Asc gear WITHOUT any crafting. You simply exchange Raid tokens + gold for an item box that drills down into the desired stat type. If you want Legendary armor, that path is completely separate, and works by collection and a tedious series of daily vendor trades (which have gotten slightly less oppressive over time).

Addendum:

In the case of Trinkets, you have 3 options......

Core stats only: several convoluted options created back when Asc gear was meant to be a complicated process specific to fractals. Amulets can be had for Laurels from Laurel vendors, Rings best obtained from Pristene Fractal Relics, and Accessories bought from the Guild Commendation trader in Lion's Arch guild office. Any method using Ectos is a bad choice due to the price of ectos in general. Rings also drop randomly in fractals, but have fixed stats. They are good source of salvage income from Matrices.
B side: Some post-core stats are available if you complete the Dungeon armor/weapon collection, but these stats are rarely used.

Living Story seasons 3/4: This option now offers ALL available stats on all choosy trinkets. You'll need a combination of a harvested map specific currency and either unbound or volatile magic, which is a season wide currency. The harvested currency is usually capped to around 50 max per day, but its inconsistently enforced between maps.

HOT/POF specific stats: the 3 main line POF stats (Harrier, Greiving, and Marshals) can be gained from the main POF maps after completing certain collections. This is almost never used, since the LS method is much simpler with far greater flexibility.
HOT specific stats outside of the LS method is only possible by doing achievements. This is content block was deeply flawed due to only offering a hand full of trinkets across the whole expansion (which can only be obtained ONCE), and none of which explicit offer vipers.

Addendum 2:
Mist Trinkets: Can be obtained from PvP, WvW and Fractals, each costing their game mode specific currency. PvP requires playing Ranked mode, and as usual, is a pain if you suck at PvP. A full set is possible in one season, but you'd have to max out the season chest 3 times (if my math is right, 280 matches with 24 hours of play time at a 50% avg win rate; 48 hours if you count queue times).The WvW vendor requires 15g worth memories of battle, and completing the Weekly skirmish track (which takes 16-24 hours of playtime to work through) PER trinket.
The Fractal vendor takes pristine fractals (gotten from dailies) and requires a minimum of 34 days per set without CMs. If you fractal every day, you usually get a ton of these built up over time. If you're solo casual, the LS3/4 trinkets are the low hanging fruit.

Also had the advantage of being able to be stat reset with a Mist Capacitor bought using any of those 3 currencies. By gold value, Shards of Glory (bought from TP) are the cheapest at 1.5g, while the Fractal version costs 3.3g. For reference, Memories of Battle (wvw) is 15g.