Ascend gear from WvW

[Kraretto.8965]

Hi, I haven’t played this game for seven years but I just come back in several weeks ago. Tried to explore the world and dungeons and final I am playing WvW. Since I played DAOC before, I like the rvr game.

Back to my question, what is the best way to obtain my first set ascend gear? I am trying crafting 500 (only 150 now...) and it requires ton of the materials. I believe it is the same to obtain grandmaster shards. (Only can get 3 per week and it requires 30 for 1 ascend gear?)

My another question is the type of ascend gears. Looks like there are:1) Misforged Hero; Directly purchase from NPCs?2) Misforged obsidian; same as above?3) triumphant; need to obtain the skin first by the triumphant armor reward track and still requires the material to purchase from npc?And the difference between hero and obsidian is the look? The triumphant has growing light? All of them share same stat?

Sorry for question. I can take three weeks for an item but really hate to go to a wrong way and recognize in three weeks later and redo. Thanks in advance.

[Excursion.9752]

Crafting - is the quickest way to get it provided you have the resources all of which can be purchased from the Trading post. (It will be pricey)Fractals - Ascended weapon and armor chests can drop in T3 fractals but mostly in T4. (this will take time to work your fractal level up . Decent gold to be made here as well)WvW - Will take a while and is not hard to get just requires you to spend a bunch of time in WvW being active to get Skirmish Tickets

First thing you need to do is finish the Triumphant Armor Reward Track 6 times one for each armor piece for your armor class

Once you have unlocked a piece of armor from the Triumphant Armor Box the ascended version of it becomes available for purchase on Skirmish Supervisor You will need Skirmish Tickets, Memories of Battle and Marks (I did not provide a link because different marks are required for different armor types please refer to the Box of Grandmaster Marks at the bottom of that page) You can craft Marks (recipes also available at the Skirmish Supervisor) or you can save up 10 Grandmaster Mark Shards and buy a Box of Grandmaster Marks which will let your select one mark of your choosing. These are also provided at the Skirmish Supervisor under the Miscellaneous tab

Extra Info:The max amount of Skirmish Tickets that can be obtained in a week is 365

The Shiny version of the armor Mistforged Triumphant Hero's armor requires you to have purchased the ascended version matching its armor type of the Triumphant Hero's armor and have the required WvW rank. To be able to purchase all pieces you will to be rank 2000 which takes a while to accomplish.

Either of the ascended sets are precursors for legendary armor so if you decided to go that route you will already be heading in the right direction.

Hope This Helps!

[AliamRationem.5172]

The nice thing about acquiring ascended gear via WvW is that it's inexpensive, requiring mostly time rather than gold. Not only can you (slowly) earn the grandmaster marks, but you can also purchase ascended gear with skirmish claim tickets. Finally, there are also random ascended armor/weapon box drops. They're quite rare, but if you're putting in the time to max participation each week, I'd be surprised if you didn't find at least 1 of these drops per month.

There's also no rush since ascended gear only provides 5% additional stats over exotics, it's not like you can't just jump right in and play! It's not like T4 fractals where you need the gear, first!

[ArchonWing.9480]

Back to my question, what is the best way to obtain my first set ascend gear?

Not from WvW. Actually I would say anywhere but WvW.

Never craft grandmaster marks-- they are a ripoff and just as expensive to craft as crafting it normally. With the price of Memories of Battle, they are more expensive to buy. Only use marks you get for free via shards. However, since it takes 10 weeks to get a single piece of Ascended armor, it is also a waste of time. The fact that you also have to spend 8 hours with the Truimphant reward track to even unlock any of these per piece is even worse. Until you aim for legendary armor, this shouldn't even be a thing for you.

Selling your Memories of Battle is a good way since they cost so much atm, and crafting it conventionally is a much better idea. Alternatively, hit up fractals that drop ascended gear a lot.

Although to be fair, 2 of them I think came from WvW.

However that comes with its own gear gate and also takes time. Also you'd need to make a separate set of zerker gear for it.

There's also stuff like Silverwastes, though honestly I haven't farmed open world in years so I have no idea what's the best. These methods are probably like 10x faster than anything in WvW though.

I would recommend crafting Ascended weapons first, get ascended trinkets either from Living Story or just from Laurel Vendor (you may also run Living Story tracks which would let you buy stat selectable trinkets). Buy exotic armor as a stopgap, as exotic armor often only costs a few gold or less. Remember there are cheaper versions of stats you can craft; for example, you can craft dire instead of trailblazer, craft marauder because it's cheap and good, or mix nomad/cleric/magi/maintenance oil instead of minstrel (though this is decidedly inferior). There's no point spending a ton on exotics, of course, so just pull something that works.

Ideally, I'd run the reward track for Bloodstone Fen/Bitterfrost Frontier if you can to get trinkets. If you don't have that or are done with that, you can run one of these reward tracks https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Memory_of_Battle/Reward_tracks that have the most memories of battle.

If you don't want to do any of this crap, you could always just gather materials. You can head here regularly: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Theater_of_Delight to chop a bunch of elder wood. You can sell the wood or use it yourself. Don't waste your time mining ore; besides iron it's all garbage besides iron or platinum; it's not even worth the time to land your pick. I assure you if you don't buy mining picks at all you will be none the worse off. (probably better because time saved). You will grab every leather node you see in WvW though.

[Infusion.7149]

With the price of memories of battle, unless you're going for mistforged set or legendary upgrade don't even bother.

It's much cheaper to make ascended from crafting. You need to factor in the cost of grandmaster marks for triumphant hero armor ; for mistforged it's mostly skirmish tickets but the 500 memories of battle are actually worth ~ 50-70g now since the advent of the legendary ring (Conflux).

[orthoptera.8142]

Also very easy to start with Warlord's Armor Boxes https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Warlord%27s_Armor_Box. If you play much WvW, you'll get one of these a week, when you finish the Bronze tier of WvW rewards. In 6 weeks you can have a full set of exotic armor of whatever stats you like. While you're doing that you can also run the Triumphant armor reward track to unlock the ascended pieces. But if you must have Ascended asap, then crafting is the way to go, although you'll have time-gated mats to deal with there. Good luck, and have fun!

[ArchonWing.9480]

Great point with the Warlord's Boxes; they're stat selectable too!