WvW Ascended Armor Price VS Crafting

[Darksun.4702]

@Solori.6025 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:

@XenesisII.1540 said:Crafting will always be better because of the time gating in wvw, and that's fine imo.The second tier of ascended gear is almost for free with requiring tickets and not marks, but need more weeks to farm tickets and minimum wvw ranks. So the more time you spend in wvw the less the cost. Pay more time or pay more gold.

Almost Free = 247g + 2620 Tickets to you?

Considering you don't play WvW for the gear its almost nothing. It's not going to be that expensive, tickets being the only real issue. Also don't forget that the WvW armor also doubles as a precursor armor in case you ever plan to upgrade it to legendary. You will swim in materials and get the memories of battle from natural play. You will never pay for the materials.

Now the marks are even less of an issue

...I actually honestly want to know how and what you are doing to swim in materials from pure WvW play.I am honestly curious.

If you open your loot bags, you should get quite a large number of materials. The problem is that you also get a large number of materials you don't need. Whether you sell or open the bags, the expected value of gold is about the same. Personally, I sell the bags and buy the mats so I have the mats I need while avoiding the mats I don't. In conjunction with minimal playing the TP, I've been able to generate enough gold to buy enough mats whenever I've needed them.

[Kovu.7560]

Anyone who plays wvw for sake of enjoying the gamemode won't even notice the timegate.And you can do this in addition to the pve grindy stuff. Or just ignore that stuff and throw a bit of time at daily stuff. I popped all of my pact map materials this week and made ~370 gold -- for instance. Only cost me a few minutes/day to snag 'em. Better gold/hour than doing the dailies (which is also a small source of revenue) and I don't even notice the time invested.

You just need to find a routine you can commit 10-30 minutes to each day and try to think of it as an investment, not a chore. Pact map materials, home instance nodes, guild hall nodes, wvw waypointed keep nodes, timegated ecto crafting materials, once-per-day material converters, dailies -- the list goes on.

Don't just hop into wvw and think it'll make all those costs go away.

~ Kovu

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@kurogane.9681 said:

@starlinvf.1358 said:

Sure you can cheese it to farm pips for minimal effort.... but for that amount of time spent, you could be way more productive farming LS4 map metas and just buy raids with the gold you make. And despite how much I actually like WvW, the match up volatility is enough to make me want to skip a week..... a week that can't really be afforded if I'm wanting to make armor for a reason.

But you can't just tell dedicated WvW players to farm in PvE maps. They may hate grinding in PvE but not in WvW.

Being in WvW is fun for them as PvE map is fun for gold grinders. Farming PvE and raid aren't our cup of tea as WvWers. What's fun for you may not be fun for some.

Except the QOL for Legendary armor isn't that much higher then having 2 gear sets for a class..... if anything, an extra gear set is cheaper, faster to swap, and only needs to be repurposed once per season with the major balance passes. Despite higher build diversity in WvW, gear sets tend to be a lot more static. In fact, I only run 1 WvW build and one PvE build, (basically 2 gear sets), and only change them with major meta shake ups. I haven't even bothered to upgrade my WvW builds since the last meta change, because they still work for their previous functions. All that means is I'm still a damage scourge, a Cele Firebrand (which means I'm offensive support instead of full support), both Spell breaker and Deadeye are still Maurader/Zerks anyway, my mesmer's Raid gear still works in WvW because its boon share anyway, Ele works fine with zerks being back line, my Rev isn't worth changing from hammer back line, and Glint vs Kalla is just a trait change. I could update my Engineer for the Holo build... but its running Knight/Zerks from 3 metas ago, and wouldn't be much different considering how the current meta operates. And my druid was half Minstrels/Nomads before PoF, but isn't worth updating due to how much more useful Firebrand is in every single department- and running Soul beast is marauders, which I could run zerks... and may as well since I'd melt super fast anyway if caught without a firebrand supporting. And I'm not planning to roam on it, so the 2 roamer builds that would be different are off the table. Same with the Mes.

They're not optimal, but their functional enough to compliment the existing meta comp as DPS. And since FB and Scourges make up the bulk of Guild run squads, all they really need (and really want) from the Pugs is enough DPS to capitalize on the support framework they've set up. Other then Cele trinkets, which I could move from my Firebrand to my Scourge, to get all my builds updated is obtaining one new set of minstrels armor and shuffling the rest around. But when I was regearing for PoF, I started using Exotic Triumphant armor for test builds to save the runes.... and I'm finding that marginal stat loss (basically 1.5% across the whole gear set) and ability to salvage runes, is less hassle then trying to shuffle ascended armor sets across major stat archetypes. And honestly, given the current WvW meta, that 1.5% difference in stats isn't going to make a huge difference with the type of damage being faced. WvW mostly uses 4 stats (marauder, trailer blazer, minstrels, Celestial), and sometimes Zerks or Vipers for extra damage. Since the latter 2 are PvE compatible, you probably already have those for your open world or fractal/raid gear set.

Being about a week away from having enough tickets to make Legendary armor, and having played almost every class in this meta to test overall viability, I'm having a hard time considering which class would put it to the most use. At best I've been arguing Guardian switching between Cele and Minstrels, but thats not as useful since Frontline doesn't need the mixture Cele brought in previous metas. Second would be Ranger due to the Dynamic of their Raid builds... but then I could just get the armor from Raids at that point (Druid in WvW doesn't scale well beyond Roaming). But for WvW, the meta has been largely using the same gear sets for the Weight classes; with the only really big change being Necro adopting Celestial into its line up, and Guardians having a good reason to go full Minstrels. For the other classes, most of their HOT meta builds still work.... they just aren't as good as FB/Scourge combo dominating the meta right now.

That leaves the top contender for useful armor set being Rev and Mesmer..... but both are contingent on me wanting to swap between optimal Roaming and optimal zerging. I don't roam often enough to justify it; and at the same time, I doubt dedicated roamers would change gear just to zerg, since they could use those same builds to slot as a DPS in the zerg. From a full WvW perspective, not enough of any single weight class changes frequently enough to really justify Legendary armor beyond mild convince. Drill down to individual classes and 3 might be worth considering (Mes, Rev, Ranger); and of those, 2 get much better justification from Raid roles, where small tweaks or rune swapping is much more useful. So really if I had to make a Legendary armor set for utility purposes, it would be for my Rev..... but Rev fell a long way from competitive performance over the years.

All of this makes me wish Engineer still had a competitive condi game in WvW. The class still has a lot of general utility that makes them useful in small numbers, and rotating between various power and condi builds is a lot more logical with how that class operates. But the raw number performance isn't as significant compared to functional strength of certain traits and skills, so honestly its moot until the class makes better use of its hybrid power distribution.

Well you probably mean either a META condi game or a well known condi game. My vanilla engi and scrapper (still looking into Holo) both play condi and do very well. Toe to toe I can melt down a scourge before they can me. Spellbreakers rarely run 90% resistance anymore so they are a bit trickier however totally doable. Druids are still a pain tho.