Returning player: Is PVP faster than PVE for ascended gear?

[Marco.6324]

Hi guys, I've started playing last month after 3 years. Got an Ele full exotic both zerk and magi and now i totally want to start raiding. So i started looking for ascended stuff, done some fractals got my rings, capped Artificer and Tailoring to 500 but the whole process for the full gear seems quite slow. Considering that I'm more a PVE guy and just started playing some PVP, would you say that I can gain the armour faster this way?

[TarkaTarquol.4856]

As far as armour, no. It takes between 150 and 400 Ascended Shards of Glory to get one piece of armour, alongside the Grandmaster Marks and some liquid gold. This is both slightly absurd and only viable during Ranked Seasons, which the current one is about to end. Honestly, your armour is fine to stay exotic for Raiding. Focus on getting your Weapons and Trinkets Ascended first, then you can start working on Ascended Armour.

[Fluffball.8307]

If you have access to LW season 3, you can VERY easily get ascended jewelry and backpieces. Armor is not important for raids as was mentioned. The only thing you'd need to worry about are weapons, which are a big deal because of the damage increase, and damage = win in GW2.

[Itz Jay.8941]

@Marco.6324 said:Hi guys, I've started playing last month after 3 years. Got an Ele full exotic both zerk and magi and now i totally want to start raiding. So i started looking for ascended stuff, done some fractals got my rings, capped Artificer and Tailoring to 500 but the whole process for the full gear seems quite slow. Considering that I'm more a PVE guy and just started playing some PVP, would you say that I can gain the armour faster this way?

It depends really. For your ascended gear, if you are playing berserker, which is a really easy stat to aquire in exotic, I wouldn't worry about grinding armour so much as weapons. Armour is only about a 3% increase or something silly, trinkets are easy to get so its worth grabbing those, your weapons however, these are gonna give you a flat damage boost and a stat boost, which is something like 6% damage maybe even more.

So, I would get an ascended staff for your weaver, learn the raid rotation and build from snowcrows.com and get started raiding now. You're going to be getting 150 magnetite shards each week, you can get them by just trying to kill bosses, you don't even need to clear them, but there are really easy bosses you complete every week to get more magnetite and chance for ascended gear. These bosses are from w1-w4; vale guardian, escort, cairn, mursaat overseer, samarog, bandit trio. Getting a little bit harder, gorseval, keep construct, sloth. The remaining bosses are all the final bosses from each wing, these are either a lot harder or require much more co-ordination. You will get even more magnetite for kills, and likely miniatures you can trade in for 40 each.

If your rotation is good and you learn the mechanics of each raid, even if you are in exotic gear, you will be better than the majority of raiders I come across. I command and pug all my raids and I'd much rather have someone who knows what they are doing in exotic gear and can do DPS than somebody in full ascended who is clueless. Use the magnetite shards to buy everything but chest pieces, they are not worth it IMO, it's better to spend them on everything else.

So apart from raids theres lot of different ways to get ascended gear. 1st you should do daily fractals, and recommended fractals as much as possible. I have 4 sets of ascended and another spare set of ascended in the bank, about 4 odd boxes and 5 odd weapons. The majority has come from T4 fractals. Get your AR up and start doing T4 ASAP. Next you have the research pages, you can get 3 per day and another buy doing 99CM, 24 gets you a piece of ascended gear which you can craft from grand master marks, this means you can craft gear slightly cheaper than normal. However, the biggest benefit of this (also with magnetite shards) is that you can craft really annoying stats really cheap.

One thing to note: do not buy a 2 handed weapon with magnetite shards. Always buy your 2 handed weapon with fractal research pages, this is costing you the same as it would to purchase a 1 handed weapon. You are basically getting 2 weapons for the price of 1. Last thing I will say is about your pvp question, it's probably worth getting the 3 grandmaster marks you can get from ranked sPvP each season, along the way you will get ascended shards too, which act the same as research pages.

[Faaris.8013]

Just start raiding in exotics, it's good enough. With the currency you get from raids, you can buy ascended stuff, and you also get it from drops. It's probably the fastest way for you if you have no spare gold to simply buy the materials and craft them.

[MikeL.8260]

You are in luck as a Weaver since you only need one ascended weapon to be good enough for raids.. Staff.