A note on the subject of the Daily Login Rewards and Laurels: You will need to have a paid account in order to receive these rewards. They are not available for free-to-players. Also when it comes to level 80 exotic armor; Free Accounts are restricted to buying crafted armor sets only, which are typically more expensive than the named sets mentioned in the video. If you don't have the gold, you can use karma to buy a set of armor at the various temples to the gods in Orr - a full set costs 252k karma, and the the armor of each temple comes equipped with a superior rune of the corresponding god. These armor sets are available in the core game even for free-to-players. The stat sets are as follows: Cathedral of Zephyrs (Dwayna) - Cleric's (Healing Power main, Power and Toughness secondary) Cathedral of Glorious Victory (Balthazar) - Rampager's (Precision main, Power and Condition Damage secondary) Cathedral of Verdance (Melandru) - Magi's (Healing Power main, Precision and Vitality secondary) Cathedral of Silence (Grenth) - Berserker's (Power main, Precision and Ferocity secondary) Cathedral of Eternal Radiance (Lyssa) - Rabid (Condition Damage main, Precision and Toughness secondary) The Narthex (Infiltration) - Soldier's armor (Power main, Toughness and Vitality secondary)
TLDR on ascended trinket (only stat selectable) -season 3, bitterfrost frontier for ring1, back, acc1(farm on 4 alts to get about 200 berries per day you need 900, also farm other s3 maps for unbound magic, will need 11k) -IBS bjora marshes for the amulet, acc2 (farm ice shards every day + open all chests, do ibs strikes fc, do the two meta events daily) will require 750 ice shards + 112k karma -In season 4, once you have bjora marshes amulet and acc, use all remaining shards to buy diflourte crystals which are the currency for Sandswept Isles, will need 750 ice shards for 100 diflourte crystals (convert in the Jora's keep merchant) + 2000 volatile magic for the last ring2) can farm map specifically for diflourte as well. -Use taco to run optimal routes on map nodes and you can have a full set of trinkets in under 5 days for armor/weapon (stat selectable) NOTE: all armor can be stat swapped easily by buying items off TP but will require 10 spirit shards per item -most straightforward way is to craft, spirit shard will be the bottleneck, craft any ascended piece and convert it to the stat you want if you don't want to grind xpac inscription/ insignia -keep playing both IBS and eod strike, convert green prophet to blue and buy the cheapest pieces (gloves, boots, and shoulders for a total of 450 shards, 150 each), better to craft the other three pieces, make sure you buy the correct armor box, there are three options and they have a different group of selectable stats, otherwise, you will have to spend 10 spirit shards to swap -better to craft weapons as they are very expensive on strike merchant(250 for 1handed, 500 for 2handed), just craft and swap -you can also do specific collections for ascended weapons, depending on if you want to or not. they are class and spec depended, however not all stat selectable -keep playing fractals/strikes every day and you will soon get ascended armor box drops that will expedite your gear progression, don't forget to attune rings good luck :)
Thank you for this guide. Gearing up in Guild Wars 2 seems really daunting because there's so many different slots and stats but you broke it down into much easier to follow steps! I also love your build guides! Even though I'm not very experienced in pvp its cool seeing someone like you pilot the build and make it look very strong.
OMG thank you so much for this!!!! holy crap Ive been killing myself grinding out Verdant for gear when I could just spend a tiny bit of gold .... Sub well deserved after this!!!
Hey man thanks for all the guides you put out there, Love especially the reaper/ranger ones. I am relatively new to guild wars 2... maybe less than a year old, in my opinion it does seem a bit difficult at first when it comes to gearing up but once you get the hang of it its pretty simple. As someone who likes to PVP gearing up seems pretty easy for me since I can get all ascended from just that but its nice to have alternatives for the players that don't like pvp.
Getting to maps fast & without playing the story: Use a "Teleport to friend" item. You just need to be in the same group as the person you want to teleport to. So use the /lfg tool to look for open groups, join them, teleport to them and leave again. You are now on the map, without needing to play any of the story. But be advised that some interactions on the map might be disabled, since you lack the story progression for them. hf&gl
If you are a new level 80 and you already bought all the living world episodes you can also try to go for the Return To achievements which will give you a legendary amulet.
Your content is always viable Vallun, you are single handedly responsible for a whole section of people in the game's understanding of PVP and game mechanics. I especially appreciate your how to fight other classes series, for those who don't have the time or money, this immensely improves on their skill in PVP, and there is nothing like your videos out there, cheers.
This is the only GW2 gearing video that answered all my questions and didn't give me a literal headache. Thanks a lot, now I know where to look for guides in the future.
NICE thankyou for your guide! More of Beginner Guides please! I would love a guide on how to do dungeons and high level stuff once you reach max level. Because i reached max on 2 characters but i never find groups to do cool stuff with and dont know how to do that really..
Quick tip on using laurels as a beginner: they are time gated and quite rare. If you are planning on crafting ascended armor/weapons, you will need 5 laurels per pieces for the recipe. So don't waste them like i did.
@@rockforlight laurels is a currency you only get as a login reward. when you're starting out its pretty rare so you have to be careful in how you spend it.
This guide is even great for a on and off 10 year vet. I came back wanting to try different builds but was scratching my head at my ascended Marauder gear like how do I convert this again? Great guides!
Also if your going to do pvp anyway I suggest skipping ascended completely and just focus on the legendaries take sometime but the requirement for both exotics and Legendaries Essentially boils down too the same thing gather pips and chests
i will say that getting the rings through Fractals is not a bad idea, and you can also get other pieces of acsended gear through doing fractals, even if it's just tier 1. It's great to go into how "you can get this and that having X expansion" it promotes buying the game. Some people hear that and will not even try the game for free assuming you need to purchase the full experience when you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game without.
I tried WVW last night and I don't think I will be playing that one again. I don't think I've seen that bad matchmaking since the time I used to play paladins. Not only was the matchmaking bad I've seen some people go into walls avoiding getting hit and firing back I didn't even know that was a thing.
For the back/accessories part, Do you have to complete episode 3 in order for the Quaggan vendor to show the items in the video? Mine only shows 1 item, unbound magic gatherer..
Been loving your content. Just jumped back in the game and leveled my Thief to level 80 now (she'll be a Deadeye), and been doing the main story for the first time. Already suffering to beat some of the level 80 maps solo with my yellow 75-80 unoptimized gear (mostly getting Power+Precision+Ferocity). Should I aim to just finish the whole story before even thinking of getting Ascended gear? I've got like 600k karma and 280 laurels, so I can probably just buy some stuff.
This helps a bit. But just find the amount of work to do is too much. Then again I don't think I finished any storyline content but I'm lvl 80. I like the journey to max lvl in mmos but hate the endgame :p too grind heavy.
You forgot to mention that Dungeons while lvling are one of the best ways to get some easy lvl 80 armor and weapons, albeit not with every stat prefix.
@@Vallun Yeah you can basically get them before you hit lvl 80, it's not that hard, especially with the new token system they did to revamp the dungeon tokens.
Good video Vallun but gearing is still little confusing for me. I just used some tok to get to 80 on my ranger. 13 to be exact so I decided I liked the class enough to do it. I bought 6 pieces of exotic gear off Tp that had power, prec, and fero as well as a bow and GS with with armor runes and sigils to go with it. At this point I have no idea what to do other than story which I haven't even started yet lol.
You can literally do whatever you want! The only game mode that you really need better than Exotic for, is fractals. You can do every other mode in the game, with zero worries. Raids, WvW, Open world, etc. Story is fun, but it isn't going to do much for you gear wise. It will however, yield a lot of mastery points, which are important in their own way. There's gear to get in this game, but it is by no means the focus. It's a hard shift to make, if you're used to other MMO's, where gear is the game. Playing the game, is the game here. You'll get used to it!
@@aidonis98 thanks I'll keep that in mind. I thought raids were the highest content you can do and fractals were upgraded versions of dungeons? That's quote odd imo lol.
unfortunately you need to be like lvl 30 to go into wvw i think, but once you get to that point yes you can just stay in WvW and keep farming the participation rewards and get gear that way. It will take a long time though and youll be at a disadvantage while doing it, but if you stick with your team it should be fine
"While leveling gear isn't required" *Logs in and undresses all of my sub-80 toons* Don't laugh at my Asuran boxers. Vallun says I don't need gear yet!
Man, watching this as a relatively new player (been playing for a couple weeks) sure is discouraging... I love this game for multiple reasons but man do I prefer vertical, linear gear progression. Im gonna stick with the game for now as ive spent a bit of money already but idk everything seems to be time-gated and/or a gold sink... Im lets say a materialist player, i like to play chasing rewards and i dont enjoy anything unless the rewards are worth it and this game makes it sooooo annoying to be this kind of player.
Awesome video, I was clueless about what I was getting into, the fact that you have so much stuff to work on to catch up with other players and the progression is tied to so much grinding and time gated farm discourages me tremendously, another thing is that thief was the class I was going for, but after reading and watching videos about it's golden age and it's current lacking state makes the game a hard pass for me, even though the gameplay and combat seems like a blast =\
@@Vallun I took some time yesterday to read the official forums, and main thief players weren't happy about the current state of the class, wvw roaming abilities got nerfed from time to time, like burst damage and stealth, even tho it is viable for group content it lacks a lot of utility and damage compared to some classes and specs, like engineer and some others that I can't remember, class isn't the most mobile anymore and neither the most damaging compared to others while others bring something to the group, except a spec called spectre I believe, which is recent and ok, but not really a thief? Current thief active population is pretty low too nowadays. That's pretty much what I've read about it..
@@DaveDzz 1. forums is where people go to complain 2. thief players are biased and think their class sucks not them 3. every class is good, and thief is the apex predator in wvw roaming
@@Vallun appreciate your opinion, if I were to play the game, I think I would still play thief, even with all the criticism, but yeah, the gearing process was very well explained, but i'd definitely feel frustrated..
I'm still gearing up my first 80, so I appreciate every video like yours 🙏
if you dont raid or do fractal, it absolutely does not matter in PvE, what armor do you have, the diference is few %
A note on the subject of the Daily Login Rewards and Laurels: You will need to have a paid account in order to receive these rewards. They are not available for free-to-players.
Also when it comes to level 80 exotic armor; Free Accounts are restricted to buying crafted armor sets only, which are typically more expensive than the named sets mentioned in the video. If you don't have the gold, you can use karma to buy a set of armor at the various temples to the gods in Orr - a full set costs 252k karma, and the the armor of each temple comes equipped with a superior rune of the corresponding god. These armor sets are available in the core game even for free-to-players. The stat sets are as follows:
Cathedral of Zephyrs (Dwayna) - Cleric's (Healing Power main, Power and Toughness secondary)
Cathedral of Glorious Victory (Balthazar) - Rampager's (Precision main, Power and Condition Damage secondary)
Cathedral of Verdance (Melandru) - Magi's (Healing Power main, Precision and Vitality secondary)
Cathedral of Silence (Grenth) - Berserker's (Power main, Precision and Ferocity secondary)
Cathedral of Eternal Radiance (Lyssa) - Rabid (Condition Damage main, Precision and Toughness secondary)
The Narthex (Infiltration) - Soldier's armor (Power main, Toughness and Vitality secondary)
TLDR on ascended trinket (only stat selectable)
-season 3, bitterfrost frontier for ring1, back, acc1(farm on 4 alts to get about 200 berries per day you need 900, also farm other s3 maps for unbound magic, will need 11k)
-IBS bjora marshes for the amulet, acc2 (farm ice shards every day + open all chests, do ibs strikes fc, do the two meta events daily) will require 750 ice shards + 112k karma
-In season 4, once you have bjora marshes amulet and acc, use all remaining shards to buy diflourte crystals which are the currency for Sandswept Isles, will need 750 ice shards for 100 diflourte crystals (convert in the Jora's keep merchant) + 2000 volatile magic for the last ring2) can farm map specifically for diflourte as well.
-Use taco to run optimal routes on map nodes and you can have a full set of trinkets in under 5 days
for armor/weapon (stat selectable)
NOTE: all armor can be stat swapped easily by buying items off TP but will require 10 spirit shards per item
-most straightforward way is to craft, spirit shard will be the bottleneck, craft any ascended piece and convert it to the stat you want if you don't want to grind xpac inscription/ insignia
-keep playing both IBS and eod strike, convert green prophet to blue and buy the cheapest pieces (gloves, boots, and shoulders for a total of 450 shards, 150 each), better to craft the other three pieces, make sure you buy the correct armor box, there are three options and they have a different group of selectable stats, otherwise, you will have to spend 10 spirit shards to swap
-better to craft weapons as they are very expensive on strike merchant(250 for 1handed, 500 for 2handed), just craft and swap
-you can also do specific collections for ascended weapons, depending on if you want to or not. they are class and spec depended, however not all stat selectable
-keep playing fractals/strikes every day and you will soon get ascended armor box drops that will expedite your gear progression, don't forget to attune rings
good luck :)
Ty so much for the quick tldr so i dont have to type it down myself 👍
Thank you for this guide. Gearing up in Guild Wars 2 seems really daunting because there's so many different slots and stats but you broke it down into much easier to follow steps! I also love your build guides! Even though I'm not very experienced in pvp its cool seeing someone like you pilot the build and make it look very strong.
Also remember the Caladbolg quest after finishing the main story, nets you an Ascended weapon of Greatsword, Scepter, Shield or Sword
OMG thank you so much for this!!!! holy crap Ive been killing myself grinding out Verdant for gear when I could just spend a tiny bit of gold .... Sub well deserved after this!!!
Thank you for covering the named armor. I can't tell you how many people I know bought the 7g a pop versions (draconic etc.) and criminally overpaid.
got mine for like 30 silver
I've been playing for years and there are still a few things that'll help me here.
keep it up, Vallun. We need you; lol
Hey man thanks for all the guides you put out there, Love especially the reaper/ranger ones.
I am relatively new to guild wars 2... maybe less than a year old, in my opinion it does seem a bit difficult at first when it comes to gearing up but once you get the hang of it its pretty simple.
As someone who likes to PVP gearing up seems pretty easy for me since I can get all ascended from just that but its nice to have alternatives for the players that don't like pvp.
Getting to maps fast & without playing the story:
Use a "Teleport to friend" item. You just need to be in the same group as the person you want to teleport to. So use the /lfg tool to look for open groups, join them, teleport to them and leave again. You are now on the map, without needing to play any of the story. But be advised that some interactions on the map might be disabled, since you lack the story progression for them.
hf&gl
If you are a new level 80 and you already bought all the living world episodes you can also try to go for the Return To achievements which will give you a legendary amulet.
Your content is always viable Vallun, you are single handedly responsible for a whole section of people in the game's understanding of PVP and game mechanics. I especially appreciate your how to fight other classes series, for those who don't have the time or money, this immensely improves on their skill in PVP, and there is nothing like your videos out there, cheers.
This is the only GW2 gearing video that answered all my questions and didn't give me a literal headache. Thanks a lot, now I know where to look for guides in the future.
Gear aquisition in gw2 is extremely convoluted since theres so many sources and they vary quite a lot in cost. Awesome video breakdown.
Great gearing guide. Gear in this game is not straightforward, so this is truly helpful.
it was quite helpful and unhelpfull in same time, as a new player, my head is just a bit overloaded with amount of information 😵💫
as a new player you shouldn't worry about gearing until level 80, revisit this then
NICE thankyou for your guide! More of Beginner Guides please! I would love a guide on how to do dungeons and high level stuff once you reach max level. Because i reached max on 2 characters but i never find groups to do cool stuff with and dont know how to do that really..
Quick tip on using laurels as a beginner: they are time gated and quite rare. If you are planning on crafting ascended armor/weapons, you will need 5 laurels per pieces for the recipe. So don't waste them like i did.
What is time gated and why does it matter?
@@rockforlight laurels is a currency you only get as a login reward. when you're starting out its pretty rare so you have to be careful in how you spend it.
U R A LEGEND for this . Tysvm! my 1st 80 is a char i boosted after level 31 so i bn clueless exactly how to get btr gear.
This guide is even great for a on and off 10 year vet. I came back wanting to try different builds but was scratching my head at my ascended Marauder gear like how do I convert this again? Great guides!
This is a fantastic resource especially as new players come in! Well done!
Oh, thanks for the video! At the same time, I subscribed to the channel. I'm just starting my journey in Tyria.
Also if your going to do pvp anyway I suggest skipping ascended completely and just focus on the legendaries take sometime but the requirement for both exotics and Legendaries Essentially boils down too the same thing gather pips and chests
Nice timing. Yesterday I got my character to level 80 and was thinking: Nice... but how do I gear up a bit?
Thank you for the guide!
i will say that getting the rings through Fractals is not a bad idea, and you can also get other pieces of acsended gear through doing fractals, even if it's just tier 1. It's great to go into how "you can get this and that having X expansion" it promotes buying the game. Some people hear that and will not even try the game for free assuming you need to purchase the full experience when you don't need to and you can still enjoy the game without.
This helped so much. Thank u
great video, very helpful thank you
this guide so helpful thank you
I tried WVW last night and I don't think I will be playing that one again. I don't think I've seen that bad matchmaking since the time I used to play paladins. Not only was the matchmaking bad I've seen some people go into walls avoiding getting hit and firing back I didn't even know that was a thing.
Not all stats have named armors associated with them mostly things with expertise like vipers or trailblazers
Seven of the core stat combos are there in all three armour weights. That's a good start for a new player.
For the back/accessories part, Do you have to complete episode 3 in order for the Quaggan vendor to show the items in the video? Mine only shows 1 item, unbound magic gatherer..
This game is so much fun...
Been loving your content. Just jumped back in the game and leveled my Thief to level 80 now (she'll be a Deadeye), and been doing the main story for the first time. Already suffering to beat some of the level 80 maps solo with my yellow 75-80 unoptimized gear (mostly getting Power+Precision+Ferocity).
Should I aim to just finish the whole story before even thinking of getting Ascended gear? I've got like 600k karma and 280 laurels, so I can probably just buy some stuff.
Oh crap so Exotic Berserker gear on the Trading Post might be the thing I should aim for now
Zerker gear is super cheap, go full zerker, maybe a few Maurauder pieces for extra health.
Very good guide! :)
In dragonfall you can buy amulet, rings and earrings.
Fastest way for my best buddy:
A lot of my gold and play a little for the shards XD
Hi Vallun, can you tell me the dyes you use for your armor combo?
This helps a bit. But just find the amount of work to do is too much. Then again I don't think I finished any storyline content but I'm lvl 80. I like the journey to max lvl in mmos but hate the endgame :p too grind heavy.
09:39 oh no the energy sigil extract it before forging/stat swapping lol
Gearing alts is easy only if you had invested in doing all the crafts.
You forgot to mention that Dungeons while lvling are one of the best ways to get some easy lvl 80 armor and weapons, albeit not with every stat prefix.
and theyre only exotics, meaning there are better ways to obtain them
@@Vallun Yeah you can basically get them before you hit lvl 80, it's not that hard, especially with the new token system they did to revamp the dungeon tokens.
thanks.
Love how i need a math degree to figure this shit out.
Good video Vallun but gearing is still little confusing for me. I just used some tok to get to 80 on my ranger. 13 to be exact so I decided I liked the class enough to do it. I bought 6 pieces of exotic gear off Tp that had power, prec, and fero as well as a bow and GS with with armor runes and sigils to go with it. At this point I have no idea what to do other than story which I haven't even started yet lol.
You can literally do whatever you want! The only game mode that you really need better than Exotic for, is fractals. You can do every other mode in the game, with zero worries. Raids, WvW, Open world, etc. Story is fun, but it isn't going to do much for you gear wise. It will however, yield a lot of mastery points, which are important in their own way. There's gear to get in this game, but it is by no means the focus. It's a hard shift to make, if you're used to other MMO's, where gear is the game. Playing the game, is the game here. You'll get used to it!
@@aidonis98 thanks I'll keep that in mind. I thought raids were the highest content you can do and fractals were upgraded versions of dungeons? That's quote odd imo lol.
i should finally start playing pve for leg armor. why did i buy 2 expansions after all?
Is there a way to just WvW from 1-80 & completely gear that way? I don't like the other game modes as much..
unfortunately you need to be like lvl 30 to go into wvw i think, but once you get to that point yes you can just stay in WvW and keep farming the participation rewards and get gear that way. It will take a long time though and youll be at a disadvantage while doing it, but if you stick with your team it should be fine
"While leveling gear isn't required" *Logs in and undresses all of my sub-80 toons* Don't laugh at my Asuran boxers. Vallun says I don't need gear yet!
Gamer, will send to fren
so fractal merchants don't have viper rings ? meaning they don't have expertise .. why/ how ?
Viper was added later on, best way to see where to get it is "/wiki viper" in chat, this will open wikipage instantly
Man, watching this as a relatively new player (been playing for a couple weeks) sure is discouraging... I love this game for multiple reasons but man do I prefer vertical, linear gear progression. Im gonna stick with the game for now as ive spent a bit of money already but idk everything seems to be time-gated and/or a gold sink... Im lets say a materialist player, i like to play chasing rewards and i dont enjoy anything unless the rewards are worth it and this game makes it sooooo annoying to be this kind of player.
Awesome video, I was clueless about what I was getting into, the fact that you have so much stuff to work on to catch up with other players and the progression is tied to so much grinding and time gated farm discourages me tremendously, another thing is that thief was the class I was going for, but after reading and watching videos about it's golden age and it's current lacking state makes the game a hard pass for me, even though the gameplay and combat seems like a blast =\
whos saying that thief isnt good?
@@Vallun I took some time yesterday to read the official forums, and main thief players weren't happy about the current state of the class, wvw roaming abilities got nerfed from time to time, like burst damage and stealth, even tho it is viable for group content it lacks a lot of utility and damage compared to some classes and specs, like engineer and some others that I can't remember, class isn't the most mobile anymore and neither the most damaging compared to others while others bring something to the group, except a spec called spectre I believe, which is recent and ok, but not really a thief? Current thief active population is pretty low too nowadays. That's pretty much what I've read about it..
@@DaveDzz 1. forums is where people go to complain
2. thief players are biased and think their class sucks not them
3. every class is good, and thief is the apex predator in wvw roaming
@@Vallun Let me +1 that
@@Vallun appreciate your opinion, if I were to play the game, I think I would still play thief, even with all the criticism, but yeah, the gearing process was very well explained, but i'd definitely feel frustrated..
Great video but f*** me I dont i will be max gearing in this game. Sounds too complex. SWOTOR is better in this aspect
"while you let your amulet build itself over time." What?
its an analogy for obtaining laurels over time
This sounds so i complicated I just dont wanna play
then maybe just play and dont care about getting the best gear?
Magumma cancer
Gem store.
Best fashion = Best Gear.
This is a fantastic resource especially as new players come in! Well done!