The road to better gear

[Satira.2849]

So, until now I have always played with exotic armor and weapons. I believe I have like 1 or 2 ascended trinkets and 1 ascended weapon from following the story, but sadly that is about it. I have no idea how to get started getting better gear (more ascended and maybe even legendaries) and where to start. I am overwhelmed by everything. What stats should I focus on? What ascended armor is best? Which trinkets should I buy? Should I craft, or maybe just WvW my way to it?

So, do you guys have any tips for me to get my things going? I am not rich, I haven't done dungeons before, and I only did the first few fractals recently. Where do I start? What should I focus on?

[Khisanth.2948]

Legendary isn't really better, it has the same effectiveness as ascended. It is mainly for the skin and maybe for the stat swapping ability but for the price of a legendary you could have a dozen ascended with different stats as well.

The easiest way to get ascended trinkets is from the LS3 maps.

Fractals is good. Decent chance of getting ascended drops if you get up to tier 4 fractals. Ascended rings are a fairly common drop even at the lower tiers and you can also get a chance of getting the ascended materials like deldrimor steel ingots.

The stat to focus on depends on what kind of character you want to make, skill level, playstyle and other stuff.

[Chadramar.8156]

Do you have LS3? If so, you can get a full set of ascended trinkets with the stat combination of your choice via unbound magic and the respective map currencies. Not every map offers an option for every slot, the most efficient way is probably to buy one item per currency so you don't have to grind one currency endlessly: accessories with winterberries and petrified wood, rings with blood rubies and fire orchid blossoms, the amulet with Orrian oysters and the backpiece with jade shards.

If you have finished the Heart of Thorns story with at least one character, do the "Knight of the Thorn" side story for your choice of one ascended weapon of the following types: dagger, sword, shield, greatsword or scepter. You can repeat this for every character that has completed HoT, but only the first character (who earns the related achievements for this mini-story) will be given three required items for free, everyone else will have to craft them.

There are some other achievments that reward an ascended item, but they take more time and effort. You may also get very lucky and get a weapon from Tequatl or an armor chest from the Triple Trouble Wurm, but I wouldn't count on that.

Don't forget that you can stat-change ascended weapons and armor in the mystic forge. This is useful if you do get a drop with stats that you don't care for, but also if you decide to craft ascended gear with stat sets from Heart of Thorns (like Viper for a condition character). It's much cheaper and easier to instead craft the item with a non-HoT stat set and convert it in the forge.

[stenx.7938]

Once you enter a living season 3 map, the WVW reward track for the map gets unlocked also (with the currencies you can get asc. trinkets from the maps, with selectable stats ) , so you don't even need to grind on the maps, but rather, if you like WVW, just play it ( occasionally ascended trinkets and armor and weapon chests drop when you level up in WVW ) As for the builds, you can check metabattle.com, where classes and meta builds are broken down into the different play modes.

[Hex.2579]

legendaries are very expensive and cost a lot of time, materials as well as golds. while they have the same stats wise with ascended, except their unique skins, animations and food prints. so you should go with ascended first. all ascended weapons and armors can be swap stats with anthology of heroes.

you can get technically free ascended armors in pvp when a season is on, using pvp currencies that drop.ascended items are very cheap in fractals too compare to manual crafting.unless you just want to wait for ascended box to drop. if not, you'll need to level up two of your respective crafting disciplines first. if you play a light armor profession, you'll have to learn tailor. depend on what weapons set you have in mind, you can either learn artificier or weaponsmith. and learning a crafting discipline is already a gold and time sink on its own. but it pays off in the end.

for wvw, i'd say marauder and commander stats are nice on a mesmer, if you're power. i'd assume you're on your mesmer cuz the profile picture. for condi, trailblazer is good but expensive, while viper need to add some carrion and/or toughness for better survivability.

sound like you're a wvw player, you may just as well wvw your way through it xD especially if your rank is high, it won't take long before you get a few pieces.the laurel merchant in wvw doesn't have the new LWS3 stats, sadly. so if you want any of the new stats on your trinkets, i'd say bitterfrost frontier is your go to. it's one of the LWS3 maps. the winterberries farm is easy and plentiful to get. you can get a trinket in no time, even if you only farm on 1 character/day.