Gear Treadmill and how to fight it?

[RagiNagi.1802]

Heyo!

I've been thinking on this quite a bit lately and I can't stop but wonder where did Anet go from their selling point of GW2 not having a gear treadmill. 

First years it was awesome. On one hand it still is. My Thief has had berserker armour for ~9 years and I have been able to clear pretty much any content with just a few tweaks.

On the other hand, once you want a bit variety, something that is not pure zerker, thats where the fun starts. I was doing raids/fracs just this summer on power WB. Geared him up and was ready to go. Now with the August patch, for some reason damage was not enough and all the meta plays required power WB to go full assassin. Ok no problem - Assassin is an easy to get stat on both exotics and ascended gear. But its still a massive investment, especially if you want to clear t4 fracs.

Where it gets more dicey is with the new stat types, like Ritualist. If you want a support build and do some damage, pretty much every build asks for Ritualist gear. That is somewhat pain to get.

Another thing are those Jade Bot Cores. I understand that you can do without Jade bots, but you need to get them to max level on every character. But ok, good thing is that there is no variety in bots at the moment. You max out one char and you can pretty much live like that.

And Relics. Man.. relics. I still don't understand how to get them or where to craft them. Im just running with the 3 boxes i got per char and using those. Otherwise I need a relic storage. I hate to keep several stacks of gear in my inventory just to be somewhat flexible with builds.

I am not complaining about the gear variety or difficulty to acquire per se. I'm just mildly frustrated that it's difficult to

• a) test builds without dropping like 100g (in exotic runes/relics/gear);
• b) there are too many unique ways of acquiring gear;
• c) that gear takes so much space in the inventory. If you want to run two different builds on a single character you need about 14 inventory slots to hold your gear + the consumables. That's hecking ridiculous. Especially if you want to play more than 1 character. 

I am guessing that the only way out of this is getting full legendary - you are able to switch stats on the fly and have all the stats available. Which will be very difficult for me with my limited play time. And I quite sure that acquiring legendary shouldn't be the only escape from gear treadmill for (semi)casual players. 

Thanks for listening. I will use any tips you can give me to avoid cluttering my inventory with gear and decking out my toons.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I'm full legendary, as full as it can get. 

So if I want to test builds, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. 

I could not imagine my pain if I had to do that with Ascended gear. 

I would say, get a meta build+gear that has been proven to be good and pray that Anet isn't killing it next patch or force a gear change. 

When you want a second build set, again only go for what has been proven to be good. 

Don't experiment. You mostly likely won't find something that others haven't already. 

Other than that. Get a bank character to store Ascended gear/relics etc. That can gets costly too Ofcourse, with needing big bags and bag extenders. But what other options do you have? 

 

[Trejgon.9367]

I still find it funny when people are talking about GW2s "gear threadmill" when the games that flat out invalidate your gear if you took a break and came back next year exists out there.

As for your relic conundrum - I myself didn't even do relic on most of my characters, due to basically me not having an idea what relic to run for their build, or what build do I even want to run on them in the first place. As for storage and acquisition of new types, if you find getting new ones too difficult to manage inventory wise, in the next quarterly update we are scheduled to get legendary relic.

And while going full legendary is a bit of a long-term goal, it does make you immune to any meta shift costing you any further. So barring new slots opening up (I am unsure how that vitality of jade bot core even popped up in this topic tho), once you get a legendary in every slot you are no longer bothered with getting new anything gearwisely.

[Zebulous.2934]

2 hours ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

 

• c) that gear takes so much space in the inventory. If you want to run two different builds on a single character you need about 14 inventory slots to hold your gear + the consumables. That's hecking ridiculous. Especially if you want to play more than 1 character. 

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_Template_Expansion
If you have the gems to buy these, this saves quite a bit of space.

If you have build templates as well then switching builds is as fast as clicking four tabs.

I am using the templates for fashion.  each piece of gear equipped to your equipment template tabs does not take up space in your inventory.   I am currently walking around with one set of ascended gear, and I have six full sets of white equipment transmuted to various themes.  none of it is taking up space in my inventory.
note: each template only applies to one character.

[Mimizu.7340]

New vendor in WVW sells selectable exotics, including armor, weapons, trinkets, back and aquabreather.

You can buy the complete set for less than 20g.

Cheap enough that you can salvage it all if space is needed.

This has reduced the cost of my build testing immensely. 

[Parasite.5389]

3 hours ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

I can't stop but wonder where did Anet go from their selling point of GW2 not having a gear treadmill.

I think people seem to misunderstand what the original meaning of the "Gear Treadmill" is:
Most MMO's use vertical progession, so every patch or expansion, the new content will require higher and higher gear scores, with the old gear becoming useless; the 'Treadmill' is the effort needed to get that new gear, "How many tomestones do i need to farm to gear up for this new Trail" says the FFXiV player, "what dungeon do i need to grind" says the WoW player.

GW2 doesn't have that design philosophy, once you have the gear you need it doesn't depreciate.
now thats not to say that you never need to change the stats on your gear, or get new gear for a new toon, but thats not what the Gear treadmill is, and not what the 'selling point' was.

[firedragon.8953]

There is no treadmill. It is more like a staircase with a few doors you can choose to enter.

Stat selectable exotic gear isn't hard to come by. Meta power dps gear is super cheap on the trading post. You can raid and do strikes with exotics which will also provide you with ascended if you want to push for higher fractal tiers. 

If you want to theory craft builds, spend the time and effort to get legendary gear. It's honestly that simple. Congrats, you made it to the end of the staircase and opened the golden door.

Edit: You can also now get ascended gear by just doing dailies/weeklies as well. Ezpz!

Edited November 13, 2023 by firedragon.8953

[evilcat.6817]

I have different experience, than OP.

Testing timers could be done with pvp bots.

One of easiest way to get exotic gear is WvW + runes from vendor. Exotic gear is all you need. Even TP exotics are not that expansive per piece. Sometimes you have named with 50silver, even crafted are like 5-10goled but if you only need 1 set, you can probably handle that.

Ascended gear is a boost, but also vanity boost, and you dont have to have it, unless you are high tier fractal enjoyer. It is event easier now with ascended geat with wizard vault. However there could be 2 ascended weapons from vault, for dual wielders.

Multiple ways to avquire gear is actually good, and prevents boredom, as well speeds up with 1 per account timers.

You can buy most of relicts? And they are generally vanity.

Jadebot is powercreep, so not having that is some inconvience, it is vanity, but also impactfull vanity.

Complain: In wizard;s vault there could be gear slot as option, as without it skill setup is not complete. But maybe one day.

There could be siatuacion when your class needed only 50crit chance, but after patch you need 60% (nerf), that could suck with switch from berserker to assasin. But it also doesnt happen that often.

There is always an option with extra character serving as mule or bank, and storing items you will totally use one day.

Edited November 13, 2023 by evilcat.6817

[AliamRationem.5172]

6 hours ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

Heyo!

I've been thinking on this quite a bit lately and I can't stop but wonder where did Anet go from their selling point of GW2 not having a gear treadmill. 

First years it was awesome. On one hand it still is. My Thief has had berserker armour for ~9 years and I have been able to clear pretty much any content with just a few tweaks.

On the other hand, once you want a bit variety, something that is not pure zerker, thats where the fun starts. I was doing raids/fracs just this summer on power WB. Geared him up and was ready to go. Now with the August patch, for some reason damage was not enough and all the meta plays required power WB to go full assassin. Ok no problem - Assassin is an easy to get stat on both exotics and ascended gear. But its still a massive investment, especially if you want to clear t4 fracs.

Where it gets more dicey is with the new stat types, like Ritualist. If you want a support build and do some damage, pretty much every build asks for Ritualist gear. That is somewhat pain to get.

Another thing are those Jade Bot Cores. I understand that you can do without Jade bots, but you need to get them to max level on every character. But ok, good thing is that there is no variety in bots at the moment. You max out one char and you can pretty much live like that.

And Relics. Man.. relics. I still don't understand how to get them or where to craft them. Im just running with the 3 boxes i got per char and using those. Otherwise I need a relic storage. I hate to keep several stacks of gear in my inventory just to be somewhat flexible with builds.

I am not complaining about the gear variety or difficulty to acquire per se. I'm just mildly frustrated that it's difficult to

• a) test builds without dropping like 100g (in exotic runes/relics/gear);
• b) there are too many unique ways of acquiring gear;
• c) that gear takes so much space in the inventory. If you want to run two different builds on a single character you need about 14 inventory slots to hold your gear + the consumables. That's hecking ridiculous. Especially if you want to play more than 1 character. 

I am guessing that the only way out of this is getting full legendary - you are able to switch stats on the fly and have all the stats available. Which will be very difficult for me with my limited play time. And I quite sure that acquiring legendary shouldn't be the only escape from gear treadmill for (semi)casual players. 

Thanks for listening. I will use any tips you can give me to avoid cluttering my inventory with gear and decking out my toons.

Not to invalidate your frustration on a technicality, but none of this is an issue of the game having a "gear treadmill".  That specifically refers to content being gated by progressively stronger gear.  That isn't a thing here.  But that doesn't mean gear isn't useful or that it's easy to acquire.  You just need it for different reasons than you would in a game that has a gear treadmill.

[Surelia.2651]

Try having your entire build from gear to skills to rotation land you in a dumpster fire every 3-4 months, having to camp out random-spawning nodes across different maps to acquire needed elements to create a BiS "mythic" that will also land in the same dumpster fire after even less time - as soon as the pvp crowd whinges that the item is overpowered and needs nerfed....  THAT is a treadmill.

Thankfully we don't have that here.  If you play regularly and often, the answer is simple: get legendary gear.  That is your progression into avoiding much of the things you describe. 

[Tinker.6924]

Other than the multiple sets of relics that anet gave everyone, the gw2 wiki has all the info on all the different relics and their acquisition: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic 

You can buy crafting recipes for most of the relics from the master craftsman vendors that stand next to the crafting stations.  For expansion-only relics that don't have recipes, you either get them automatically by completing SotO content and you can buy them from 3 different vendors (a pve, spvp, and wvw vendor)

Edited November 13, 2023 by Tinker.6924

[Curennos.9307]

Have you been playing for 9 years and have *no* legendaries? Just curious.

I've been primarily a PVP player for a while, with rare ventures in PvE (and more often recently as PvP goes further down the drain). I have two sets of legendary armor and am working on a 3rd (by which I mean I just need to do some raids, I'm lazy). WvW has extremely affordable exotic pieces, and if you do fractals a lot you should have a bunch of ascended armor drops stored away.

The thing I don't like is that getting particular insignias is a pain and a half 'cause sometimes they come from a particular map vendor and there's no way to buy them (or, insofar as I can tell, craft them either, which is weird), but that's really only a concern for me with weapons at this point. Insignia accessibility for stat swapping could definitely use another lookat, imo.

The 3 relic boxes per char is plenty though. I have several relics I use per 'active' character (I think I have 15+ chars total but only actively play 4-5), and on my engineer in particular I have 5+. I haven't run out of relic boxes yet, though I have purchased a few on the auction house and gotten a few of the newer ones from a vendor, since the ones offered in the relic boxes are just the 'base'.

I do like that armor templates also 'hold' the gear so it isn't floating around in your inventory, as others have mentioned above.

[RagiNagi.1802]

8 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Don't experiment. You mostly likely won't find something that others haven't already. 

 

but I can't go trough life with only one zerker build. I want to try out the gameplay of other builds. And for that I think I would need to have as close stats as possible to builds on the build pages.

8 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I still find it funny when people are talking about GW2s "gear threadmill" when the games that flat out invalidate your gear if you took a break and came back next year exists out there.

well yes.There is a difference between vertical and horizontal progression. Maybe what Im seeing is not a treadmill up hill, but hecking hike over a very large desert. The desert has several mountains - 3 class legendary armor, legendary trinkets and legendary weapons. And for someone who likes variety and not being 'stuck' with one profession, these hills are quite the distance from one another.

6 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_Template_Expansion
If you have the gems to buy these, this saves quite a bit of space.

This is probably addressing the inventory space issue. But not the acquisition.

5 hours ago, Mimizu.7340 said:

New vendor in WVW sells selectable exotics, including armor, weapons, trinkets, back and aquabreather.

You can buy the complete set for less than 20g.

I will have a look at it, didn't know this exists.

30 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Have you been playing for 9 years and have *no* legendaries? Just curious.

Yup. Thats the case. I have several toons. And i play on and off. Pretty much get trough the new LS chapter and park the game for a moment. And I'm also often super confused with all the collections. There are too many for me to keep track of. Something for the ring, something for armor, something for amulet. They all take storage space, need to be crafted. And the inventory just gets more cluttered, with other insignificant collection/story items that i'm always wondering whether to destroy or not.

Well thanks everyone for the answers. I see that Legendary Armor is the ultimate goal, that should be reached to have the build flexibility on the go. Suxx that you have to chose the set, as I do like Guardians, Rev's Thieves and Necros..

I don't know, maybe I just have to get set on one toon. But maybe I will just continue to sulk 😛

[Curennos.9307]

6 minutes ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

Yup. Thats the case. I have several toons. And i play on and off. Pretty much get trough the new LS chapter and park the game for a moment. And I'm also often super confused with all the collections. There are too many for me to keep track of. Something for the ring, something for armor, something for amulet. They all take storage space, need to be crafted. And the inventory just gets more cluttered, with other insignificant collection/story items that i'm always wondering whether to destroy or not.

Well thanks everyone for the answers. I see that Legendary Armor is the ultimate goal, that should be reached to have the build flexibility on the go. Suxx that you have to chose the set, as I do like Guardians, Rev's Thieves and Necros..

I don't know, maybe I just have to get set on one toon. But maybe I will just continue to sulk 😛

I would recommend looking into the pve legendary armor from raiding. If I recall correctly, it's considered the quickest (if you can stand raiding, at least). They're coming out with an open world set of legendary armor at some point as well that might be up your alley. I only really play light and medium armor classes (I don't like guardian, warr only for spvp so gear doesn't matter there, and I only just started finding a build on rev that I clicked with). Imo the trinket legendaries are too much trouble unless you play that often, so I haven't done them and probably won't lol.

Also, the set is account wide, but by weight. So if you get legendary medium armor, you can pop it onto every medium armor class character you have, and so on, for free. It'll just show up in the equipment menu where you would go to equip gear from your inventory.

[DarcShriek.5829]

Gear treadmill?  The moment any of my characters reach lvl 80 they are fully geared with the best stats available.  What is this gear treadmill you speak of?

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

8 hours ago, RagiNagi.1802 said:

Another thing are those Jade Bot Cores. I understand that you can do without Jade bots, but you need to get them to max level on every character. But ok, good thing is that there is no variety in bots at the moment. You max out one char and you can pretty much live like that.

Who came up with this weird rumor? About half of my crafting requests are T10 cores, which are not necessary for any content. The most important module, the Sensor Array can be equipped with a basic T1 core. Those modules are the valuable Scavenger Protocols and the Recyclers. For the Service Chips, a T6 core is required. But those upgrades are basically open-world PvE gimmicks. The only thing you need a T10 core for is to get the maximum bonus vitality. 
-
Simplifying builds

1.) Blood Ruby Trinkets & Backpiece
You can buy Rings, Amulets and Backpieces for Bloodrubies with LW3: E1 (Bloodstone Fen). Those can be reset quickly with a Bloodstone Capacitor. You can technically run 2 rings, 1x Attuned Blood Ruby Band (Infused) + 1x Attuned Blood Ruby Band, which are considered non-identical items. You basically lose just 1 infusion slot for the extra convenience. In addition you can use the Blood Ruby Pendant and the Blood Ruby Backpack (Blood Ruby Backpack (Infused)). Sou are are only left with changing your Accessories/Earrings when switching to a new build after a patch. 

2.) Caladbolg Weapons
This is somehow still considered secret knowledge, because not many guides actually consider these options worthwhile. To obtain these, you need to finish Heart of Thorns story-line to get the 'precursor' to craft ascended Caladbolg Weapons. You need to complete the Knight of the Thorn achievement (one-time).

What is so special about those weapons?
They are interchangeable in weapon-type and can be reset on their stats whenever you want it. If you run a Greatsword (ascended) with Berserker's stats and want to have a Dagger, you can change that weapon into a Dagger and pick new stats for it. Want to have a shield instead? No problem. Those weapons can be anything of the following:
Caladbolg Astera (Shield)
Caladbolg Iridi (Scepter)
Caladbolg Orchida (Greatsword)
Caladbolg Rosa (1H Sword)
Caladbolg Solana (Dagger)

Acquisition is a bit annoying, but the convenience to change both the weapon-type and reset the stats make these weapons more valuable than any other ascended weapons.
-
Most of the methods how to acquire exotic gear cheap and easy have been listed already.

Thanks to the rune-rework, it is much easier nowadays to change rune-sets without ruining a (meta) build. Because the 6th bonus is no longer a thing. So when the meta requires more precision, you can always go for a rune-set that offers more. As long as you do not make drastic rune/stat-changes, the DPS is mostly acceptable. Most important element is still playing your class properly, that can balance out even slightly inappropriate stats.

Having every character T4 CM fractal ready is a luxury you will not have until you get 100 % legendary gear. You said above that you are a casual gamer, so I guess this is out of the question. Personally I do not recommend using new builds in Fractals, especially not with pugs, because they do not like surprises ^^. They want reliable stuff that works.

I have like three fractal-ready gear sets. One DPS, one support and one heal. And everything else has full ascended trinkets + backpack from LW and full exotic weapons + armor, which works great for build-testing. If I find something worth upgrading to fractal-ready, I can use my unused ascended gear-boxes on it. A few years ago I wanted to have all characters I own T4 ready, which would have costed me a fortune. I can technically pull it off now, but I know that I will not use most of these builds there anyway.

So think about your 'true' needs and gear those characters in ascended which you want to use for that content. For raids & strikes, you can go full exotic anyway. Again, the stat difference is low. If you can play your class properly, it is always the better option.

[Qys.5937]

Doesn't WvW let you setup whatever load out you want to test things? And coming from other MMO's where you straight up had to replace your gear wholesale every few months GW is tame in comparison gear-wise. The ability to swap gear/weapons to other characters with the same type.  Even ascendant stat swaps are just a matter of crafting an insignia and dropping it in the Mystic forge. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Qys.5937

[Danikat.8537]

What you described is not a gear treadmill. That's when you have to grind new gear just to keep what you had, like how you have to run on a treadmill just to stay in place. If you got your ascended beserker armour and then a new release came out and now everything is balanced around a tier above ascended so you have to replace everything you've got just to be able to complete new content as you could before, then do it again when the next release comes out, and the one after that and so on that would be a gear treadmill.

What you're describing is simply wanting options available. What you've got still works as well as it did and you could keep using it if you wanted to. If you want lots of options available to you at all times then you're going to need multiple characters, additional build or equipment tabs or a mix of characters and tabs. It's a long-term commitment but it would definitely be worth working towards legendary equipment as well.

(My solution is to pick 1 build I like for each character and stick with it until I feel like changing it, but I assume that's not something you'd be ok doing.)

56 minutes ago, Qys.5937 said:

Doesn't WvW let you setup whatever load out you want to test things? And coming from other MMO's where you straight up had to replace your gear wholesale every few months GW is tame in comparison gear-wise. The ability to swap gear/weapons to other characters with the same type.  Even ascendant stat swaps are just a matter of crafting an insignia and dropping it in the Mystic forge. 

WvW doesn't but PvP does. It's a bit more limited because you only pick an amulet and that applies the same stat combination to all your equipment, and you only pick 1 rune, so you can't mix and match, but that may not be a problem for the OP as I think very few PvE meta builds mix stats anyway. You also need to be aware that some stat combinations are only available in PvE or PvP, and some skills function differently, so you won't be able to get an exact replica of a PvE build. But it can give you a good idea of how a build works and if it's something you'd want to use.

[evilcat.6817]

1 hour ago, Qys.5937 said:

Doesn't WvW let you setup whatever load out you want to test things? And coming from other MMO's where you straight up had to replace your gear wholesale every few months GW is tame in comparison gear-wise. The ability to swap gear/weapons to other characters with the same type.  Even ascendant stat swaps are just a matter of crafting an insignia and dropping it in the Mystic forge. 

Structured PvP allows you to load free special PvP gear. Which is good for testing setups.

WvW allows you to buy full exotic gear with some silver and badgers of honor. And this is great, as you can go full exotic, full selected with minimal wvw farm, But you still need to buy sigils, runes, other exquisite jewels which could add the cost.

[Cuks.8241]

8 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

I think people seem to misunderstand what the original meaning of the "Gear Treadmill" is:
Most MMO's use vertical progession, so every patch or expansion, the new content will require higher and higher gear scores, with the old gear becoming useless; the 'Treadmill' is the effort needed to get that new gear, "How many tomestones do i need to farm to gear up for this new Trail" says the FFXiV player, "what dungeon do i need to grind" says the WoW player.

GW2 doesn't have that design philosophy, once you have the gear you need it doesn't depreciate.
now thats not to say that you never need to change the stats on your gear, or get new gear for a new toon, but thats not what the Gear treadmill is, and not what the 'selling point' was.

There is one distinction players don't mention about gw2. When you play wow and a new patch hits, you will get new gear as drops in new content. Yeah you need to repeat the content a few times to get to a decent level and grind if you want full bis. But generally it's a very natural process of acquisition and you get it while playing, progressing through new content.

In gw2 its actually not much different game loop. A new expansion hits, instead of gear you need to get new masteries to progress the expansion maps. In the past you needed HP for new specs. And unless you are full legendary getting new stats is not much different to acquiring best gear in vertical game. It's probably even more grindy. Me personally, I prefer if gear comes from drops and I dont need to grind a bunch of new currencies and do some boring new collection that involves listening to 15 npc talking...

Don't get me wrong gw2 is waaaay more friendly if you take a pause and especially for alts. I never had so much alts and no mmorpg offered me so much variety of different characters and builds to play. But the issue the author has is not much different to vertical progression game, only packaged a bit differently. Getting new relics is a total pain. Whoever thought it's a good idea to lock these behind story and meta collections (or wvw/pvp tracks). I would rather grind bosses (if we ever get more interesting bosses in gw2) for relics than do story achievements. Luckily I have a few stacks of wvw and pvp potions just for this reason.

[Lucy.3728]

Quote

Gear Treadmill

That's what legendary equipment is for.

Reduces the salvaging old armor pieces.

Otherwise get yourself enough stats select armor pieces like the blade armor you can buy from the verdant brink frog vendor at the beginning (2g each +map currency) and the new wvw dude. He sells everything with stats select.
For ascended use the new reward system from daily/weekly. Ascended stuff you can pass down on other characters.

4 of 5 chars in my new account (about 4-5 weeks old) have 1-2 armorsets. Can't say it was bothersome or expensive. And since it is a new account, there are limits. I cannot go and buy bladed armor.

My main acc has a lot of wvw hours and thus a lot of armor chests with stats select, not only from the reward tracks (like desert) but also from drops. I even delete the reward tracks ones (only need to unlock their skins) because I have many warlord's armor boxes.

 

[Trejgon.9367]

4 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Have you been playing for 9 years and have *no* legendaries? Just curious.

I have played for 11 and only got one - The Flameseeker Prophecies Shield I finished making like two years by now 🤔

Yes I did not finish the seasons of dragons achievements quite yet. Have put it on pause somewhere in LWS4.

[RagiNagi.1802]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

(My solution is to pick 1 build I like for each character and stick with it until I feel like changing it, but I assume that's not something you'd be ok doing.)

well yes.. and no..

I would like to have the possibility to switch up builds on the go for my main char. Need support? - lets go Harriers Quickbrand; want to play condi? - lets go ritualist firebrand; feel like power in open world? - do the berserker one.

A game is well designed, when you can efficiently run and change up at least few builds on the go. And I understand that there are two ways you can be flexible with gear is either grind out legendary armor, or grind out the 'exotic' recipes and put the items in purchased equipment slots.

And don't tell me that its easy to gear your char in ascended for T4 fracs, because it is not. one set, yes. But if you want variety it is a chore. With all the currency framing for trinkets and time-gated materials. It is a chore, where it shouldn't be really.

Edited November 13, 2023 by RagiNagi.1802

[Qys.5937]

I guess I kinda see how it could be annoying, particularly to someone who has never seen a real gear treadmill. I was used to having 2-3 different sets per character that I played that had to be completely re-farmed every time a new season hit along with whatever new gimmick or mcguffin showed up. Some of this is reminding me of playing with people who if it wasn't bleeding edge BIS it was garbage. Sure ritualist might be the new go to but did the old pre-fix just completely stop working? I mean can't you just keep using that for awhile until you get the different set. Is it a case where the new set is 2% better but not really needed over the old set. Looking at gear in this game the stat difference between exotic and ascendant is rather small. 

[bossdonut.1938]

18 hours ago, Mimizu.7340 said:

New vendor in WVW sells selectable exotics, including armor, weapons, trinkets, back and aquabreather.

You can buy the complete set for less than 20g.

Cheap enough that you can salvage it all if space is needed.

This has reduced the cost of my build testing immensely. 

where do i find stat select jewely and weapon, wvw the robot i found only gives armors