Is the grind worth it for Ascended Gear?

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

Hello,

Is it worth the grind for Ascended Gear? You need a lot of different things and you have to invest a lot of materials and gold.

Thank you.

[costepj.5120]

There are plenty of shortcuts.
Want ascended accessories and backpacks: collect some LS map currencies and buy them from vendors. Or complete some story achievements. Or use laurels.
Want ascended rings: as above, or just play through fractals where they drop like confetti.
Want ascended armour: buy up to three chests from the Wizards Vault every season.
Want ascended weapons: buy one chest from the Wizards Vault every season. Or not infrequent drops from events like Tequatl, Dragonstorm, Drakkar and Soo Won. I have about a dozen Gifts of Aurene sat in the bank!

[Danikat.8537]

That depends on what you're doing in the game: for Fractals ascended is required above tier 1 (because you need agony resistance and can only put it in ascended items), for raids, strikes and WvW it's recommended, for other areas of PvE it's optional and you can't use it at all in PvP.

Crafting it is the simplest and most reliable way to get it, but that's balanced out by being expensive and time consuming. There are alternatives. The simplest is probably to buy it from the Wizard's Vault, but that's limited to 2 armour pieces and 1 weapon each season. Playing Fractals, strikes, raids and WvW will give you a chance to get ascended items as drops, and will get you currencies you can use to buy it. It can also come from various achievements (only once per achievement though). Oh and you can get trinkets from laurel vendors or from Living World Season 3 map vendors.

It might seem contradictory that the best places to get ascended equipment are also the ones where it's required or recommended, but you can start doing all those things (especially Fractals and WvW) without ascended equipment and use the drops and currencies to upgrade gradually as you progress through it. Raids and strikes are more variable - it depends on the group, but if you ask your guild they can probably help you.

Edited February 6 by Danikat.8537

[evilcat.6817]

You can buy LS3e3 *winterfrost frontier* or ls4e6 (dragonfall) and farm trinkets there. You can also use laurens for trinkets with Berzerker, Assasin, Celestial statline. For weapon and armour use wizard vault when avaiable.

Generally it is not exacly worth for heavy farm over everything else. But picking berries here and there is worth it, and Dragonfall is overall good meta anyway.

From everything Ascended Weapon is the best, as it is easy 5% overall damage. The hard part is getting crafting to 500, after that a single piece is like 50gold, which overall isnt that much. And part of resources you can get with regular play.

Depends what other gold goals you have, at some point there is not much left to buy, so might be ascended weapons.

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

forgot to mention i want to assemble this build +/- :

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/necromancer/condition-scourge/

EDIT: For wizard vault. what means every season?

Edited February 6 by DoNotAimAtMe.3510

[idpersona.3810]

50 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

forgot to mention i want to assemble this build +/- :

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/necromancer/condition-scourge/

EDIT: For wizard vault. what means every season?

a season is about a quarter. We've only been in 2 so far. I believe there's about 3 weeks left in this one. Also, it's 3 armor pieces and 1 weapon attainable per season. Enough to gear out a build in just 2 seasons.
Crafting can fill in any missing items for about 30-35g each.

For trinkets, you can farm them cheaply on some of the living world maps.

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

Thanks, did they have fixed stats? Maybe they can be changed on mystic forge?

Need to do more wizard vault reward points 😄

[Randulf.7614]

You can change via the forge, but you have to craft something to do it.

Ascended is only needed for fractals at the higher tiers. It's not necs to grind for it though these days because it's much easier to get. But that jump from Exotic to ascended will make a virtually no difference because the stat increase is too small to be noticeable. I'd advise getting rings/accessories/backpacks/weapons first since they give slightly better stat jumps than armour

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

Ok thanks. i will take a look at trinked but i think i need that mats for buying them to 🙂

[idpersona.3810]

4 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

Ok thanks. i will take a look at trinked but i think i need that mats for buying them to 🙂

trinkets can be bought for the various living world map currencies. I don't recommend it but you can also buy amulets for laurels. I remember that being the way I got my first ascended item back in the day. 

[Randulf.7614]

11 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

Ok thanks. i will take a look at trinked but i think i need that mats for buying them to 🙂

Trinkets are the easiest to get

- Living world currencies (season 3 especially)

- Laurels

- Guild commendations

- Fractals

- Strike mission tokens

They are however the only ones that can't be crafted. I appreciate you are relatively new to the game, so you wont be doing some of these tasks yet or have a big stack of laurels to spend, but there are other sources too. Personally, I would make it a long term goal and just get exotic. Like I said, it's a goal not a necessity

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

I'm still playing thought the story off all seasons and dlcs 🤣 having exotic gear for all slots yet, after finished the story my goals are to get better gear, skyscale and map complettions + masteries.

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

In general they trinkets looks different have another name but if the stats are selectable all are the same?

[Buran.3796]

1 hour ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

forgot to mention i want to assemble this build +/- :

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/necromancer/condition-scourge/

EDIT: For wizard vault. what means every season?

  The Wizzard Vault rewards have two categories: things that can be claimed with no limit and thaings that can only be claimed a finite number of times x season (each season lasts 3 moths). Aside from one precursor of legendary weapon + some extras which can only be claimed once x season, for a starter player some of the most valuable items would be the scended armor pieces (you can claim up to 3 x season) and weapons (1 x season). That meand that just doing your dailies and weeklys you can obtain 4 ascended weapons and 2 full sets of ascended armors in a year, essentially for free.

   Ascended trinkets can be obtained at almost no cost with the tokens from maps from season 3, 4 and Icebrood Saga. The best maps for getting those are Bitterfrost Frontier (ring, earing, back piece, respirator), Bjora Marches (amulet and earing, requires the completion of 2 quest to geat access to the vendors), Dragonfall (amulet, ring, earing) & Sandswept Isles (ring, earing), along with Bloodstone Fen (amulet, ring and back piece; the farimng was nerfed here but the ascended trinkets from this map can be reset in stats at very lo cost).

   Another source from asfeceded gear is PvP and WvW, in which you earn tokens which can be traded for any weapon/armor piece/trinket, but I highly recommend to SAVE those tokens to craft the legendary armors from those game modes.

  Would it worth it? Well, ascended gear can deliver ~12%+ damage than exotics, and can equip infusions, which are crucial in fractals and relevant in PvE/WvW. My advice would be craft your first ascended set for your main goal (with the stats you want to instanced content, as example) and at most a secon one (my advice would be celestial), and then STOP crafting ascended gear and focus on crafting the legendary armors, then trinkets and finally weapons. DO NOT swap the stats from any ascended armor piece obtained from WvW or PvP tokens, since those armors are precursors to the legendary ones, and using the mystic forge to re-arrange stats would turn them into regular PVE ascended armor pieces.

[Randulf.7614]

11 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

In general they trinkets looks different have another name but if the stats are selectable all are the same?

Yeah trinkets often have different names, but the same stats. It's a lore/flavour thing

Watch out for anything that says "unique" in the description. I'm not sure if any are still out there, but it means you can't equip two rings for example with the same name

[Buran.3796]

10 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Watch out for anything that says "unique" in the description. I'm not sure if any are still out there, but it means you can't equip two rings for example with the same name

   You can if one of them has more infusion slots than the other.

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

I think I leave infusions empty until I play higher tiers fractals?

[Watt.6420]

6 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

I think I leave infusions empty until I play higher tiers fractals?

You can put another infusion in it later. An infusion extractor is 24 silver(from vendor) and a +5 agony infusion is 27 silver(from TP)

So, you essentially are going to lose at most 24 silver per infusion you put it. Anything worth more you'd take out before putting a better one in, and anything worth less than a +5 you'd just put another one in which destroys the old one.

Edited February 6 by Watt.6420

[DeanBB.4268]

I maxed my crafting long before I thought about ascended gear, and before there were so many options for attaining ascended. So maxing crafting was never part of the "grind."

I'm also a Certified Hoarder, proud member of Hoarders Anonymous, so had/have plenty of mats when I needed a piece of ascended armor, or a weapon.  So that part was never much of a grind.

In fact, I'm just not much of a grinder in general.

Now I have plenty of legendary weapons, so have very little need of any ascended, but (being a hoarder) do keep some in the bank for that 4x Swords build I may run some day. 🙄

[Randulf.7614]

49 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

   You can if one of them has more infusion slots than the other.

I know, but I'm trying not to overload them with extra info until it's needed

[Tinker.6924]

Ascended gear is worth it and there are many ways of acquiring it besides crafting.  Most ascended gear is also not soulbound unlike exotic
 

read this excellent guide

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/User:Tanetris/So_You_Want_To_Gear_a_Character

 basically focus on back piece, trinkets, and then your weapon

back +trinkets can be from lw3 e1-3 with your best bang for buck the winterberry farm in lw3e3

 you can also buy ascended gear with the different currencies from raids, strikes, fractals, wvw, spvp, and guild missions

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You can acquire certain ascended weapons with this 'quest':  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knight_of_the_Thorn

[DoNotAimAtMe.3510]

I'm not at home for few days, but for example I need 100 blood ruby's to buy trinkets how long will this take to get this 100 blood ruby's and maybe the needed magic unbound?

It's gonna be a heavy grind for this?

[Urud.4925]

Don't forget that you can buy an ascended weapon and 2 pieces of armor from the Wizard's vault, by just completing weekly and daily quests. That's the cheapest way.

EDIT: @Danikat.8537 already said it, never mind. I second that suggestion 🙂

Edited February 7 by Urud.4925

[costepj.5120]

25 minutes ago, DoNotAimAtMe.3510 said:

I'm not at home for few days, but for example I need 100 blood ruby's to buy trinkets how long will this take to get this 100 blood ruby's and maybe the needed magic unbound?

Blood rubies are one of the harder currencies to accrue, but the reward for the extra effort is those trinkets can have their stats reset using a bloodstone capacitor. Make sure you do the Hablion and Bloodstone Maw events each day (you can repeat on different characters).
Bitterfrost Frontier is the easiest map for getting the currency. You can gather lots of berries in a short time.