You've hit level 80, cleared your story, did some dungeons, and a while ago you did your first steps into raids and strikes. However, you feel as if your damage is like a wet noodle compared to others. So what went wrong? Most likely your gear is holding you back more than your actual skill. After I couldn't find a group for my last story, I decided to do it alone. And I could have saved hours of my time, if I only would have looked up a guide on gear and attributes.
Therefore, this guide will provide a general understanding on how equipment and attributes work in Guild Wars 2.
Guild Wars 2 is a large game, with complex mechanics and interactions throughout. The intention of this guide is to help gearing any class and character and to give a basic understanding of existing endgame builds made by the Guild Wars 2 community. Understanding those details, will also help you to create your own variations and custom builds to adapt to the needs of your squad.
This guide will assume that you possess all of the Guild Wars 2 expansions and will use exotic gear for your first character.
Gearing for Guild Wars 2 endgame
To join endgame content, it is recommended to have at least a full set of gear of the Exotic rarity for your class and role.
Rarities below exotic such as rare or common will not give you the needed Attributes and significantly lower your capabilities. It is also further recommended to have trinkets of the Ascended rarity but it's not a must.
You can buy almost all exotic gear for Gold at the Black Lion Trading Company, however some prefixes may require you to craft them or acquire them via other means. This is explained below.
To gear your first character, open the Hero Panel by press H and select the equipment tab. This will allow you to equip your armour, weapons and trinkets. You will also see a panel with attributes as the title, beneath you can find your stat totals gained from all sources.
Armour and Runes
The difficulty of acquiring exotic armor depends on the stat prefix your class requires and the expansions you own. The easiest stat prefix to obtain is Berserker stats, as it is a core-game stat and widely used by nearly all power classes. You can easily purchase it with Gold from the Trading Post. Depending on your expansions, you can also buy Harrier stats (used by healers) and Viper stats (used by condition-based classes).
Another very accessible stat prefix is Celestial. If you used a Level-80 Boost, you would receive a full set of Celestial equipment (armour, weapons, and trinkets) to equip your character.
There are several options for acquiring stat-selectable armor pieces, including:
- Bladed armor: An armor set associated with Verdant Brink, the first map of the Heart of Thorns (HoT) expansion.
- For a stat selectable helmet you can buy Ice Golem's Maw Box and for stat selectable shoulders you can buy Ebon Vanguard Shoulders off the trading post.
- If you are willed to play PvP or WvW to equip your PvE character, you can complete either PvP league chests or WvW skirmish rewards to obtain the .
- Some stats, such as Magi for some healers, are available for Tale of Dungeon Delving at Dungeon Merchants .
- Other options to obtain armour are also various collections , crafting or as a reward from Living World Episodes.
- If you need Dragon's or Ritualist stat prefixes, you need the End of Dragons expansion! For Dragon's stats, you can craft Jade Tech armour that you buy recipes for from any Xunlai Jade Sales Associate, for Ritualist stats can craft the Exotic Ancient Canthan armour that you buy recipes for from Chin-Hwa. For the Ancient Canthan armour you will need to have unlocked the rare version by playing through the End of Dragons story.
To know which route you should take when it comes to requiring armour for endgame content, is to check the build page to know what stat prefixes you need to go for.
After you acquired your armour, you will notice that they have slots for runes. Getting runes is very similar to getting armour. You can buy most of them from the Trading Post or craft them yourself. Crafting is usually cheaper but it requires some investment first into levelling your crafting professions.
For some runes you will have to run some dungeons. A notable example is . You can purchase them for Tale of Dungeon Delving from the Dungeon Merchant.
You will need a or to retrieve your runes when you upgrade to ascended armour. Be aware that some exotic pieces, such as the armour from the level 80 boost, aren't salvageable so be careful!
Weapons and Sigils
The easiest way to get exotic weapons is to either buy them from the Trading Post or craft them yourself! You can also drop them as loot from bosses or world bosses, get them as PvP or WvW reward etc. However, the easiest and fastest way is buying or crafting.
If you opt for crafting, then make sure that the crafting profession you are levelling or using can craft the weapon your class needs as not all weapons can be crafted through weaponsmith.
You will notice that you can slot sigils into your weapons. For one-handed or off-hand weapons you can only use one sigil; for two-handed weapons you can slot in two sigils.
Sigils can also be bought from the Trading Post or craft them yourself. However, some of the recipes are hard to acquire, time-gated or expensive.
As mentioned earlier, you will also need or to retrieve your sigils if you want to upgrade to ascended weapons later on!
To check further information on crafting professions check out: gw2crafts.net
Trinkets
The last missing parts of your equipment are the trinkets and the back item. As well as with your previously obtained equipment, there are many ways to get them. The easiest is, of course, to buy them off the Trading Post or crafting them. However, not all exotic trinkets may come with the stat prefixes you need.
It may also be worth getting ascended trinkets from the beginning as they are usually easier to get than ascended weapons and armour. For an ascended back item, the easiest way would be the Raise the Banners achievement.
If you go for other ascended trinkets, there are also several ways to get them. One way is to join your guild for guild missions and buy some for Guild Commendation in the guild hall. Another way would be to buy them for laurels at a laurel vendor. You can also acquire ascended trinkets over Living World episodes! They often require you to have a certain map currency to buy them from NPC's and some currency is easier to farm than others. Another option would also be to buy them from fractal vendors for pristine fractal relics such as , which offers selectable stats. The same trinkets can also be bought via WWvW or PvP if you don't mind playing these game modes to gain their unique currencies! Keep in mind that for PvP, you will have to join ranked matches as unranked matches won't give you the needed currency.
Many ascended trinkets are unique, which means that you can’t equip 2 of the same item. This can be circumvented by either infusing or attuning rings. Rings can be in 4 states: non upgraded, infused, attuned, and infused-attuned. If you have 2 unique rings that are in different states they can be equipped at once.
Relics
The last open trinket slot is for the relic. Relics got introduced to Guild Wars 2 with Secrets of the Obscure (SotO). They add special passive abilites and effects to your class and some of them even replace the old sixth-tier rune bonus.
The core relics are available on the Trading Post or you can craft them. You can purchase the recipes from Master Armorsmiths, Leatherworkers or Tailors.
For some relics, mostly expansion relics, you may have to
- Progress the Secrets of the Obscure (SotO) story or Janthir Wilds (JW) story to get them as a reward.
- Do collections or other achievements.
- Do some Fractals of the Mists or even Strike Missions.
You can also hop into WvW or PvP to complete certain reward tracks in order to get your needed relic.
Expansion relics are unlocked account-wide so if you need to purchase another you can simply visit Junior Archivist, Archivist Ikur, Heroics Notary (WvW) or League Vendor (PvP). Just be aware that these vendors may require specific currencies!
Attributes
To really understand your gear, we have to finally look at attributes. All gear in Guild Wars 2 is comprised of three, four or even nine attribute combinations.
- Power
- Precision
- Ferocity
- Condition Damage
- Expertise
- Healing Power
- Toughness
- Concentration
- Vitality
All gear, aside from Celestial, will have one or two 'major' stats and one or two "minor" stats.
The total stats obtained from any piece of gear with three unique attributes will be the same as any other three attribute gear of the same rarity and type, and the same applies to gear with four unique attributes, and Celestial gear with nine.
Double handed weapons add the highest amounts of total stats per piece, followed by Trinkets and then One Handed Weapons and Armour which varies per piece.
Some attributes will have a base amount on a character before gear, scaled to the character level. The base amounts at level 80, and mathematical conversion of attributes are as follows:
- Base Power is 1000. Every 10 Power equals 1% more Strike Damage with no cap.
- Base Precision is 1000 and Critical Chance starts at 5%. 1% Critical Chance is gained by 21 Precision.
- Base Ferocity is 0 and Critical Damage starts at 150%. 1% Critical Damage is added per 15 Ferocity.
- Base Expertise and Condition Duration are 0. 1% Condition Duration is added per 15 Expertise.
- Base Concentration and Boon Duration are 0. 1% Boon Duration is added per 15 Concentration.
- Base Healing Power is 0. Healing scaling varies, so it is best to read relevant skills, traits and abilities.
- Your base healthpool is class dependant. One Vitality equals 10 hitpoints added directly into your health pool.
- Toughness and your Defense rating total together to make up Armor , as shown in the Hero panel! Defense rating is visible in the stats popup for relevant gear, and is determined by the armour weight class and gear rarity.
Food and Utility
After getting all your equipment, your build will also need food and utility items to maximise effectiveness. The food and utility your class needs are listed on the build page.
Ascended food is unique as a player that uses it will drop an interactable feast that allows anyone to share the same food. This can be very useful in a beginner group as you might only need 1 ascended feast for all your DPS players. Ascended food does require 500 Chef to craft however.
All non-ascended foods can be bought on the Trading Post or you can craft them. Crafting is cheaper but does require levelling Chef. However, it is worth the investment as all instanced content require you to use food.
Check out our Guild Wars 2 Food Glossary to see all the options!
Jade Bot Core
End of Dragons introduced tiered equipable Jade Bot Cores that boost Vitality. Therefore, improving the toal health and survivability on any class. Some classes may gain indirect benefits Vitality such as Firebrand or Necromancer. The highest tier is tier 10, which boosts Vitality by 235.
Hopefully, this guide gave you an idea on how gear and attributes work. Gearing your next character, maybe even for another role, or looking into higher gear such as ascended should be a little less daunting. It may take a little effort, but being able to contribute to your team in endgame feels truly rewarding.