Possible ways of getting ascended Minstrel's gear?

[Farzo.8410]

So I've returned to the game after 4 years.

 

WvW was my go-to mode majority of the time, but now so much has changed it's a lot of new things to learn and take in.

 

So the research I've done is that Firebrand Support build requires Minstrel's gear, and I'm asking in what ways I can acquire this gear.

[Infusion.7149]

Do strikes or spend skirmish tickets to get ascended mistforged gear from WVW vendor.

Crafting it also has dropped a lot in price due to legendary armory and also the pearls dropping in price. When it was around 3g per pearl I worked out all the ways to get the insignia, one is the story achievement from Heart of Thorns,  Story Mission: The Jungle Provides in Heart of Thorns Act 1.

You can use exotic from the warlord armor boxes or something like bladed armor boxes from Verdant brink in the time being especially for shoulders/headgear. I would not dump all your gold into armor unless you have spare funds. Weapon + trinkets are much more important.

[ASP.8093]

If you've played WvW a bunch before, and have the Skirmish Tickets and Memories of Battle laying around, you can buy Ascended Armor of any stat combination from the WvW Skirmish Supervisor. This one -> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skirmish_Supervisor

 

Otherwise you may be way better off starting with exotic gear. You can use Bladed Armor boxes (HOT reward), Warlord Armor boxes (free weekly from playing WvW), and WvW reward track boxes (just don't do the dungeon armors, those have limited stat selections) to get them quickly.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I actually recommend mixing some Giver's in, as higher health is harder to heal and having just 15k is enough.

 

You can temporarily use Exotic armor:

- Completing Heart of Thorns story gives Box of Minstrel's Gear (1x).

- Verdant Brink has stat-select gear for all but the Chestpiece, which can be had from T4 meta or some other method.

- Warlord's armor box from WvW, once per week after completing a few tiers of Skirmish.

 

Rare Bandit weapons off TP (stat-select), or a few Exotics like Iron Legion Staff.

 

Ascended trinkets from LS3/LS4 maps. Backpieces are easier in LS3, but rings and accessories can be faster in LS4. This is because only have to play two maps (Sandswept Isles and Dragonfall) to get a full set. Though Bitterfrost Frontier in LS3 will be faster for several items if you have alot of characters to spam at Winterberry nodes.

 

Crafting Ascended armor is currently very cheap. Though I recommend going for the WvW Ascended armor if you can afford the Skirmish Tickets, as this will allow you to progress to Legendary later, which can then be equipped on all Heavies on your account for free Ascended-quality stats and full infusion slots (think Fractals for example).

 

You can also get a few Ascended armor pieces from Achivements, for example from completing Leystone Armor collection I believe (not hard with farming Dragon's Stand+WvW Reward Track).

 

Stats on ANY existing Ascended armor and weapons you have can be changed via Mystic Forge. However, extremely don't do this to any armor to be used as a Legendary precursor.

 

You also don't need full Minstrel's. As I said a mix of Giver's and Minstrel's works well. There's also other stat combos that work for Firebrand like Plaguedoctor (if you want to take some Burning damage, too). You can also just run full Celestial since 40% Boon Duration was added to it as part of Icebrood Saga.

 

Good luck!

Edited September 12, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[ASP.8093]

3 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

I actually recommend mixing some Giver's in, as higher health is harder to heal and having just 15k is enough.

Why does it matter whether you're walking around at 15k/20k hp or 15k/15k hp? (10k/15k hp is obviously worse than 15k/20k hp, though.)

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, ASP.8093 said:

Why does it matter whether you're walking around at 15k/20k hp or 15k/15k hp? (10k/15k hp is obviously worse than 15k/20k hp, though.)

Vitality only offers a buffer for conditions and one-shots, having higher health is a disadvantage in the long term especially if you have active defenses and sufficient cleanses. While Toughness, Vitality and Healing Power all scale similar to how Pow/Prec/Fer do for Power damage, Vitality ultimately results in diminishing returns (e.g if you have 20k HP you need twice as much healing to fill your health bar). This doesn't just affect heals coming from yourself, but from allies as well, and on Guardian in particular it can make Dodge roll healing--which is their main source of self-healing in competitive since it has absurd scaling--insufficiently sustaining.

 

The only reason Vitality is taken at all is most one shots top out at around 12k even after all the damage nerfs, so they can still one-hit a Guardian, Ele or Thief without any Vitality and only 10k base health.

 

That said you don't want to take full Giver's either because its Toughness main instead of Healing Power main unlike Minstrel's, which can result in the same kind of thing as taking too much Vitality. This game is full of soft caps and you have to be careful stats are distributed appropriately; full stat builds in particular tend to be inefficient.

 

The soft caps in general are: Health: 15k, Armor: 3k, Healing: 1k. Past this you always see diminishing returns, (e.g Sigil of Benevolence outstrips Sigil of Life after about 900 Healing Power). Its like a curve that goes up, peaks, and then goes down. The downward portion of the curve is better allocated to other stats instead of trying to strain for every last ounce of benefit.

 

Most full Minstrel's builds are intended to troll or are otherwise meme builds, too.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Hannelore.8153