Returning player from pre-expansions

[Davey.1489]

I haven't really played seriously since before Heart of Thorns. I used to do fractals, opens world and dungeons in the core game. I have a Warrior main with a few ascended weapons and such. I have 500 in weaponsmith and huntsman and400 in armorsmith. (I havent even played since they added ascended armor). I'm mainly interested in getting a couple of sets of ascended gear, farming, dungeons, raids, and WvW. Stuff like that. Is the Warrior even a viable class these days? Should I just skip living world season 1 and 2? Should I do Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire first? Story isn't important to me, I just want gear and gameplay. I think I read living world 3 and 4 have lots of good zones and gear. Any help and tips for how things have changed would be great. Coming back has been overwhelming. Id even like to start another character but I cant imagine going through all this again to gear out another one. 

 

[Gibson.4036]

If you don't care about story, Path of Fire first to get mounts, then Heart of Thorns. Mounts make HoT terrain much less frustrating. Unless you want to experience the frustration of getting around the jungle and how it slowly leaves as you unlock the masteries like jumping mushrooms and the froggy burrows.

Living world 3 if you want to farm currency to buy ascended trinkets.

[Veprovina.4876]

If you like fractals, you can keep doing them. Warrior elite Berserker is very much a good choice for fractals, i have one too and i never feel like i'm dead weight or not wanted. Axe/Axe for direct damage (red bar damage) and Mace/Mace for unparalelled CC (blue bar damage) and you're set.

 

In WvW, Spellbreaker warrior support for big groups. Idk what they use for roaming but i've seen both Spellbreakers and Berserkers around...

 

For elite spec unlocks, either do open world hero points, or do WvW or PvP and buy hero points from the vendor. That's how i unlocked my alt elites, just bought the HP unlocks by doing WvW. It's pretty easy and doesn't take long to get the currency for it.

 

Anyway...

 

If you want ascended, you can get it from Fractals too if you enjoy them. You only need it for fractals anyway. It's not needed for open world or raids, and it's only recomended for WvW. PvP uses its own standardized gear system so you have no choice of armor rarity there at all, you get what everyone else gets.

 

Fractals armor:

Do fractals, get currency, buy from a vendor with grandmaster marks (you need to have the appropriate crafting dicipline for the marks - for heavy armor - armorsmith 500). Craft marks, buy armor with fractal relics. Fractlas are also a great source of gold, so it won't be long before you can afford all that and even more, so don't worry about that at all.

Fractal armor is stat selectable. And of course, you can change the stats later with the recipe.

 

WvW armor:

Same as fractals, do WvW, eventually you'll get enough skirmish tickets and grandmaster marks to buy it, except, it takes a SIGNIFICANTLY longer time invenstment to get the same thing. First you need to do the reward track to unlock a specific piece, then grind tickets (about 40 hours a week to max the weekly cap), then do crafting for marks. You get mark shards so you'll get some for free but not nearly enough to cover the entire armor, and you don't get nearly as much gold as from fractals so you'll always be short.

WvW is messed up right now in terms of what you get for time invested so, only do WvW ascended armor if you really enjoy WvW and treat the armor as "eh, mighs as well since i'm doing WvW anyway" thing. The only plus is you can craft legendary armor out of it later as each ascended piece is a precursor. But that'll take you 6 months of 40 hours per week so... Be warned.

If you don't have 40 hours to spend in WvW per week, it'll take you significantly longer - up to several years for a legendary set.

Ascended is doable though, but fractals is still faster and cheaper.

 

PvP armor:

Same as WvW, do PvP and get currency, make marks, buy armor. It's also a precursor for legendary except it takes significanly less effort to do than WvW IF you enjoy PvP. If you don't, well, don't even think about it, it'll just annoy you.

The other thing is, you get far more money out of PvP than you do WvW so it's a bit easier to make.

 

Raids:

You don't need ascended armor to raid, but you can get it from raid vendors and it doesn't even require grandmaster marks like with other vendor methods. Getting into raids though is, well... "Interesting"... Not gonna comment on that more. In any case, it's a source of Ascended if you like that.

 

Crafting:

You can of course craft ascended directly without grandmaster marks. Just get the recipe and gold/materials and you're set. It's not as hard to do as it used to because there's more gold in the game and Ascended became cheaper.

It costs about 50 gold worth of materials to make one piece, and you can get 50 gold easily just from doing dailies for a month and you get way more from certain open world meta events and stuff.

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/ascended?filter.type=0&filter.subtype=Coat&filter.weight_class=heavy

50 gold is not a lot of money theese days.

If you want some special recipes (Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire recipes) you'll have to get them from doing certain stuff on that maps, but it's not hard to do.

 

All above mentioned sources have weapons too.

 

Trinkets:

You can get ascended core tyira stat trinkets (like Berserker's which you'll be using on your Warrior for sure), from laurel vendors. There's fractal and WvW laurel vendors too which lower the cost of laurels but add a Fractal/WvW currency on top of it (which you'll be swimmin in if you do those modes) so i suggest going to them instead of the open world laurel vendors to save up on some laurels (since they're a time gated currency).

 

You can also farm LS3 maps and get stat selectable trinkets which is the perfered way since it's relatively fast, doesn't use a rare currency and for instance, bloodstone fen trinkets (ring, accessory, backpack) can be reset, and you can change stats on them, kind of like a "legendary lite". Just be sure to extract any infusion out of them as they get destroyed.

 

Achievemets:

There's a lot of achievements you can do that will grant you ascended trinkets, weapons, armor...

Some are hard, and some are easy like "Knights of the Thorn" which will get you an ascended weapon of your choice (from like, 6 types), that can be stat reset and reset into another weapon type. You get if after finishing HoT story, and you can do the entire achievement collection in an hour with a youtube guide.

 

As for your Warrior, don't worry it's viable. 🙂

Edited September 2, 2021 by Veprovina.4876

[kharmin.7683]

You might look through this forum for other tips: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/forum/25-players-helping-players/

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I'll add to the above post:

Though it takes longer to get Ascended armor from competitive modes, its far easier to take it to Legendary status afterwards, since armor from Fractals can't be upgraded to Legendary, only armor from raids.

 

This is worth noting as the game as Legendary Armory now, so you could play Guard & Rev on the same gear.

 

But for pure Ascended, doing Fractals is by far the quickest way next to dumping gold into crafting.

 

@ OP:

You said " Id even like to start another character but I cant imagine going through all this again to gear out another one.  "

 

Ascended gear is account-bound. You wouldn't have to go through the effort to gear another character as long as they can equip the item, you just transfer it via bank. And you can change the stats on almost any Ascended gear at any time using a Mystic Forge recipe, although destroying upgrades inside of it.

 

The only Soulbound gear is Exotic and lower which cost very little to replace now.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Veprovina.4876]

Just to add, don't try to change stats on the WvW or PvP precursors!!!

 

They are precursors and you will need that exact item to craft your legendary.

 

Stat changing destroys an item and gives you a new one, that's why you can unlock new skins by stat changing.

But if you do that to the precursor, your precursor will be destroyed and you'll be given a crafting style ascended instead, which you can't use for the legendary. Like, legendary requires Triumphant Hero's chest, and if you stat change it, it becomes Ruka's chest or Yassith's chest or whatever you turn it into. But you need Triumphant Hero's to turn into a legendary.

 

So, if you're getting WvW or PvP armors, make sure you don't change stats on them after the initial choice.

Be careful when changing stats on weapons too.

 

Basically, any crafted ascended and fractal ascended is safe to stat chenge. WvW, PvP and envoy armors from Raids are not safe to stat change.

 

So bear that in mind. If you plan on doing stat changes often (which will become pricy), pick some armor that isn't needed for anything. But if you plan on stat changing very often, then perhaps invest into a legendary instead, it'll be worth it.

[Fxncy.2398]

I consider myself a Warrior main and from experience I can say that Warrior is great for open world content! Berserker Elite spec is best for PvE but does great in all realms of the game. I have found spellbreaker gets best results in WvW.

 

For ascended trinkets and some gear you can do story achievements or farm map currencies such as blood rubies and buy stat selectable ascended trinkets.

 

I would suggest doing PoF first to get at least a few of the mounts. Raptor is best at moving quickly while on the flat ground. The bunny boy is best at big vertical jumps! Those two tend to be the most useful and easiest to get mounts. The griffon and skyscale are for sure the best overall, especially for some of the HoT maps. The griffon is much easier to get than the skyscale, there are guides online to help.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Fxncy.2398