Is Ascended gear extremely hard to get in this game?

[Magnedeus.4713]

I've been wearing the same exotic gear for months. And not gotten any ascended gear. I know you can make some via crafting but it cost a ton of gold just for 1 piece. Is  there an easier way to acquire ascended gear or am i just stuck in exotic?

Edited April 13 by Magnedeus.4713

[Sobx.1758]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_weapon
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_trinket

You can now also get 3 armor pieces and 1 weapon from vault every ~3 months or so.

Edited April 12 by Sobx.1758

[kharmin.7683]

First question I would ask is why do you want ascended?  It's only about a 5% bump and is really only required for high tier fractals. 

As for the cost, yeah, crafting ascended is designed to be a gold/material sink which helps keep the in-game economy in check.  If you want the goods, you gotta pay for 'em.  Unless, as Sobx pointed out, you want to get them via the Wizard's Vault.

[illuminati.8453]

Wizards Vault.  2 weeks and you are done.  It has never been easier to get Ascended gear in this game.

Edited April 14 by illuminati.8453

[Randulf.7614]

It’s almost at the level now as exotic was on launch - ie reasonably easy with a bit of effort for certain stats. It’s low cost to craft, free with login rewards and available from a wide variety of vendors

It also gives virtually no advantage over exotic 

Edited April 12 by Randulf.7614

[Cuks.8241]

In open world ascended gear drops are extremely rare and not a viable way to gear.

As you move to instanced pve like fractals, raids and strikes or even wvw those drops get more frequent but are still not a completely reliable way. But all these modes with addition of also spvp also have a way to buy ascended gear with mode specific currencies. 

If youre open world players wizard vault and/or crafting is probably the way. Even with wizard vault you will probably want to change stats on some gear so youll likely need crafting for that. Crafting is just needed for high end stuff in the end.

For accesories look at living world vendors. Easy with some currency grind.

[Sinsear.5068]

Kind of a pain, kind of a cost, but not extremely hard neither

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

living world episodes are also filled to the brim with easy to get ascended gear. My fav. were the ascended backpacks from Siren's Landing (oysters+karma) and the ascended breathing apperatus from Bitterfrost Frontier. 

 

Crafting ascended gear - is a mixed bag. The material question is easily solved: craft the time gated stuff daily and suddenly you are good. The problem: for some statsets you need recipes that can be hard to get. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

There is much information on acquiring Ascended gear in this former thread:

 

[evilcat.6817]

Try to fish for weapon and armour from wizard vaults, just do weekly 2 times and you are done for season.

Trinkets are a bit tricky, the most lazy aproach is: rings from fractals, amulet from laurens, accessory from bitterfrost berries map.

Easy trinktes are in LW3E3 Bitterfrost LW4E6 Dragonfall

In Icebrood Saga Drakkar metaevent has decent chance of weapon drop, it could be like 1/10 but it is still good, the most chill farming. And it is still metaevent so you might like rewards overall

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Well... what else are you spending that gold on?  I just crafted it all back in the days when crafting it was far more expensive.  There's many alternate paths to get the weapons and armor, but crafting is always an option that is available to you.  

Also, small note, but everyone else is underselling the difference in performance.  Changing your weapons alone to ascended is a 5% increase in strike damage.  Going full ascended is a 10% increase overall, and getting all of the infusions is about a 12.5% increase overall.  The increase in armor tier alone reduces damage by around 2.5%.  

[Danikat.8537]

It's not hard to get but it only really comes from specific places, you're extremely unlikely to get it as random drops.

First thing to know is exotic is fine for everything except high level Fractals, so you don't actually need ascended. It does have slightly better stats, but it makes far less of a difference than ensuring your exotics all have matching stats appropriate for your build and useful runes and sigils and you know how to play your character effectively, so if you're struggling to kill something and hoping ascended will carry you through it you'll need a different approach. But if you're looking for the next step to upgrade to after getting a matching set of exotics that is ascended.

The wizard's vault is likely your best starting point: you can get 3 armour pieces and 1 weapon from there and all you need to do to get them is complete enough dailies, weeklies or special achievements to get the AA.

Achievements can be a good option too, depending on what you want. It's a guarenteed result - you can see before you start exactly what ascended item you'll get and what you have to do to get it. The only downside is there may not be an achievement you want to do giving the item you need.

Crafting is a good option for pieces you can't get from achievements and/or alongside the wizards vault. It is expensive for a full set but one piece isn't too bad, especially if you're not in a rush so you can make the time-gated materials instead of buying them.

If I was you I'd start by looking for achievements you can do which award ascended items you could use and work on those first, then use the Wizard's Vault to fill in gaps and if necessary craft any pieces you can't get from the other two methods.

[Ashantara.8731]

9 hours ago, illuminati.8453 said:

Wizards Vault.  2 weeks and you are done.  It has never been easier to get Ascended gear in this game.

They are limited to three armor pieces and one weapon per cycle (i.e., every three months). You are nowhere near done.

[Lucy.3728]

To me the difference between ascended gear and exotic is more than just 5%

Maybe it's because of the additional infusions. But I notice it between my accounts. Before the vault giving away ascended gear only my main acc had the good stuff. But all my accounts have the same set chars for wvw. With arc I even saw the difference.

Getting ascended gear outside of core stats is still difficult (or expensive when stats changing via the mystic forge). I'm collecting for a minstrel setup on my third account at the moment and I do it via wvw. I need to run a certain reward track until I got 6 pieces of triumphant armor to unlock the ascended version of it at the skirmish merchant. Then I need quite an amount of several wvw currencies to buy the pieces. The pieces are cheap and the wvw currencies cost time, it is a time consuming way. But an excellent way for those who like that game mode.

[Strider.7849]

15 hours ago, Magnedeus.4713 said:

I've been wearing the same exotic gear for months. And not gotten any ascended gear. I know you can make some via crafting but it cost a ton of gold just for 1 piece. Is  there an easier way to acquire ascended gear or am i just stuck in exotic?

An easy way to get it with no crafting or cost involved, use the Astral acclaim in the wizards vault. You can get ascended weapon and armor sets that are stat selectable. 

[illuminati.8453]

6 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

They are limited to three armor pieces and one weapon per cycle (i.e., every three months). You are nowhere near done.

Well, they are half way done.  🙂   

You are right though, I forgot it was every quarter instead of every week.  Still, I stand by my statement that it has never been easier to get ascended gear. 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

Living World seasons 3 and 4 are the easiest ways to get ascended rings, backpacks, amulets, and trinkets, all fully stat selectable.  Doing EoD strikes regularly have a decent (though small) chance of dropping ascended weapons that likewise have no limitations on what stats you can select.  EoD strikes also have good gold rewards, so they're worth doing anyway.

Wizard's Vault works nicely for getting armor for core game stats, which works great for strike damage builds, but condition builds typically want expertise, which only exists on Celestial in core stats.

[Ashantara.8731]

42 minutes ago, illuminati.8453 said:

Well, they are half way done.  🙂   

You are right though, I forgot it was every quarter instead of every week.  Still, I stand by my statement that it has never been easier to get ascended gear. 

You need 6 pieces of armor (7 if you count the aquatic head gear) and 2-4 weapons per build (4-6 if you count the underwater weapons).

But yes, it's a major help to have another method of acquisition added to the game. 👍

Edited April 13 by Ashantara.8731

[Tinker.6924]

The more modes you play in this game, the easier it is to get ascended gear.  Here's a good guide on gearing up with sections on obtaining ascended gear.  It is by no means comprehensive

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

Raids, Strikes, and to a lesser degree Fractals are good sources of currency that you can buy ascended gear with.  It's also possible to get ascended gear from wvw and pvp but I play those modes far less often than so I don't know how easy it is.

Living World 3 zones, especially Bitterfrost Frontier, allows you to farm nodes for items like "winterberries" that can be used as currency to buy all the ascended trinkets, underwater breather, and backpack.  You will also need Unbound Magic, which you can easily get by buying the Unbound Magic Harvesting/Logging/Mining tools from LW3 Karma merchants allowing you to farm unbound magic anywhere from any node. Same with LW4 zones but personally I prefer the LW3 zones.

There are also achievements that reward ascended weapons many of these achievements are found under Collections > Specialization Collections.  

You can also get an ascended weapon for finishing the HoT story.  See the wiki for the Caladbolg Reforged (note: HoT spoilers there).

If you play the game with a plan, you can get a full set of ascended gear easily.  If you play it randomly, it won't happen.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 4/13/2024 at 3:53 PM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Well... what else are you spending that gold on?  I just crafted it all back in the days when crafting it was far more expensive.  There's many alternate paths to get the weapons and armor, but crafting is always an option that is available to you.  

Also, small note, but everyone else is underselling the difference in performance.  Changing your weapons alone to ascended is a 5% increase in strike damage.  Going full ascended is a 10% increase overall, and getting all of the infusions is about a 12.5% increase overall.  The increase in armor tier alone reduces damage by around 2.5%.  

Agreed. While individually the differences are only 5% per weapon damage/armour defence/character stat (less percentage wise if it's a character stat with a 1000 base) the bonuses compound upon each other. Even just a 2.5% bonus multiplied three times is 7.7%, to the power of 4 it is 10.4%, etc, plus of course there are the infusions. Full ascended with stat infusions is more like 10-15% better than exotic when you factor in everything including increased survivability (possibly better for Celestial if your build can make good use of all the stats).

Edited April 16 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Daenxi.4530]

On 4/13/2024 at 4:53 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Well... what else are you spending that gold on?  I just crafted it all back in the days when crafting it was far more expensive.  There's many alternate paths to get the weapons and armor, but crafting is always an option that is available to you.  

Also, small note, but everyone else is underselling the difference in performance.  Changing your weapons alone to ascended is a 5% increase in strike damage.  Going full ascended is a 10% increase overall, and getting all of the infusions is about a 12.5% increase overall.  The increase in armor tier alone reduces damage by around 2.5%.  

Yes its mind blowing how non chalant people are being about the difference this makes, very misleading to new players.

[starlinvf.1358]

On 4/13/2024 at 1:19 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

 

It also gives virtually no advantage over exotic 

I’d say easy stat swapping and reusable is a nice advantage.  

[starlinvf.1358]

5 hours ago, Daenxi.4530 said:

Yes its mind blowing how non chalant people are being about the difference this makes, very misleading to new players.

new players don’t do that kind of math. much less justify the cost in objective terms. 

leggy armor has that problem in spades.  most players only want it because its the highest tier, but complain about the cost  to make it. 

asc is a small scale version of that. if you’re playing at a level where it can make a difference, you can reasonably afford it, or at least know how to afford it. 

So how I explain it is ask what are you doing that justifies it. The answer I’d like to hear more of, but never do, is “I may as well”.   Usually it sounds like people think high tier gear will carry them, like it does in other games. 

[Danikat.8537]

5 hours ago, Daenxi.4530 said:

Yes its mind blowing how non chalant people are being about the difference this makes, very misleading to new players.

It's still not much compared to getting top tier equipment in many other games. In a lot of games if you didn't have the equivalent of ascended you could not survive in a lot of level 80 areas, especially things like raids and strikes. Ascended is nice to have and does produce bigger numbers, but if someone is unable to complete some part of the game it's very unlikely upgrading to ascended versions of the same things they're already using (same stat combinations, same build etc.) will make a difference. (Unless of course it's high level Fractals and they're dying because of agony.)

What I suspect makes a bigger difference for some people, especially some new players, is that the cost and/or time required to get ascended gives them more of an incentive to make sure they're getting the right pieces, so they think about their build and what stats they actually need instead of just using whatever they can get. For some people it might be the first time they've had a complete build. (Although I'm sure there's also people who thought about that long before and got a full set of matching exotics, and people who just equipped whatever ascended items they could get first/cheapest without worrying about the stats.)

That's definitely how it worked with me getting my first set of exotics at level 80 (ascended didn't exist then). Until then I didn't even know what some stats did, including fairly important ones like precision. I thought I knew, so I never looked it up until I was researching available combinations and deciding which would be best for me.

[Daenxi.4530]

11 minutes ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

new players don’t do that kind of math. much less justify the cost in objective terms. 

leggy armor has that problem in spades.  most players only want it because its the highest tier, but complain about the cost  to make it. 

asc is a small scale version of that. if you’re playing at a level where it can make a difference, you can reasonably afford it, or at least know how to afford it. 

So how I explain it is ask what are you doing that justifies it. The answer I’d like to hear more of, but never do, is “I may as well”.   Usually it sounds like people think high tier gear will carry them, like it does in other games. 

Well I genuinely want to to gear my celestial renegade with full Ascended+Infusions so I can humble all these arrogant willbenders that refuse to acknowledge how they are completely being carried by a build that is babied by the devs at the neglect of the games balance. I just think there are a lot of roaming encounters that were so close that I have lost against *certain match ups* 👀  and I don't think being outplayed was the problem, so gear is the only way to make more progress in this  area.