Guild Wars 2: The Ultimate Ascended Gear Guide

Ascended Gear is one of the strongest gear sets in Guild Wars 2. If you are looking to deal the highest amount of DPS or be the best support around, you need Ascended Gear! In this article you will learn how to obtain Ascended Armor, Weapons, Trinkets and a Backpack!

How to get Ascended armor?

For newer players or players that have yet to create their first set of armor, there two ways.
You can get a set with Grandmaster Marks, that’s the cheapest way. Or by Crafting the entire set.

There are other ways, for example, if you get a lucky drop from a Fractal or by completing an achievement. But we are going for consistency here, not luck.

Grandmaster Marks

Let’s start with the cheapest way, Grandmaster Marks.

Grandmaster Marks are tokens that can be earned in various ways, in different game modes.
You can get them from Crafting, Ranked PvP and World vs. World. Once you have enough of them, these vary depending on the piece of armor you want to buy, you can trade these for a piece of armor. Although this is the cheapest way, it’s not the fastest way.
The rate you get the Grandmaster Marks highly depends on the gamemode you play.

Getting the amount of Grandmaster Marks by just PvP could take up to 3 entire seasons. This whole process can take you months to achieve. Or you have to complete the final reward track 8 times in order to get enough Grandmaster Marks for one full Ascended Armor set.

You can also earn Skirmish Tickets in World vs. World and turn these in for Grandmaster Marks. If you earn the maximum amount of tickets per week, it would take you 4 weeks to get a enough Grandmaster Marks full Ascended Armor set. This is considerably shorter than the PvP method.

You can also craft these Grandmaster Marks but you need 500 crafting for your desired armor class. For example, you want to craft Grandmaster Marks for heavy armor? You need 500 Armorsmithing. For Medium armor you need 500 Leatherworking and for Light armor you need 500 tailoring. You can also get the recipes for these marks at vendors in the lobby of your favorite gamemode.

If you are tight on gold but do have 500 crafting for a specific armor class, choose this method.
You can combine this Crafting method with Fractals of the Mists, World vs. World or PvP.

So, craft a few of those marks, do daily fractals for Fractal Research Pages and exchange them in the Fractal Lobby for Ascended Armor. Also, while doing Fractals you might get lucky and an Ascended Armor box might drop. This contains a piece of Ascended Armor and then you will have one less piece of Ascended Gear to worry about!

It sounds complicated, I know, so let me summarize.

You can get Grandmaster Marks in different ways:

• Ranked PvP
• World vs. World
• Crafting

Once you get enough of these marks, usually 2 or 3, this depends on the piece of armor you are going for, head on over to a vendor and exchange the Grandmaster Marks for a piece of Ascended Armor. This needs to be done with other items and a little gold as well. For example, in Fractals of the Mists you need Fractal Research Papers and Relics whereas in World vs. World you need Skirmish Tickets and Memories of Battle.

Crafting Ascended Armor without Grandmaster Marks

If this sounds like a lot of hassle, there is also an easier but slightly more expensive method; Crafting. This way, you craft the whole set of Ascended Armor without Grandmaster Marks and other complicated materials. In order to do so you need 500 crafting for the armor class you are going for. This is either Tailoring, Armorsmithing or Leatherworking.

If you want to go this route, I advise you to stack up your materials and not sell them on the trading post while playing the game. This makes the method considerably cheaper. However, you usually run short and need to buy some materials from the trading post or you have to grind them together.

If you want to craft your Ascended Armor it’s wise to start crafting your daily Ectoplasm Refinements. You need these Ectoplasm Refinement materials to craft Ascended Crafting Materials. Let me give you an example of the Tailoring crafting profession.

In order to craft Ascended light armor I need a tailoring of 500 and I need Bolts of Damask.
If you dig a little deeper, you will notice that in order to create a bolt of damask you need a Spool of Silk Weaving Thread. Once you get there, make sure to craft these.

Spools of Silk Weaving Thread cannot be traded on the trading post and can only be crafted once a day. After the daily reset, which is 1 AM for European players, you can craft them again. In most cases you won’t need to wait the full 24 hours to craft the materials again. Start crafting your Ectoplasm Refinements immediately when you start playing. This way, you won’t forget about it and it only takes like 30 seconds to craft. Even when you are currently not crafting Ascended Armor it’s good practice to stack up on them beforehand.

Once you have a Spool of Silk Weaving Thread you can start crafting your damask. If you go the ‘crafting route’, it could still take up to 1 to 3 days to craft a single piece of Ascended Armor.
If you want to speed up this process you can always ask your friends or guildies to craft the Damask for you if you give them your materials. And if you don’t want to do that you can always buy the Damask from the trading post.

I suggest to pick or combine the two methods I described before to get your first set of Ascended Armor. Your second set of armor should be easier to acquire.

Once you get your first set of Ascended Armor a world of opportunities opens up. For example, you can participate in higher level Fractals and in Raids. The more you participate in higher level fractals the more chance you have on getting an Ascended Armor Box drop.

Also, when you are able to participate in Raids with your new ascended armor set you start earning Magnetite Shards or Gaeting Crystals. These two types of currency can be exchanged into Ascended Armor at various raid vendors.

How to get Ascended Weapons?

Ascended Weapons can be acquired in the same ways as Ascended Armor. You can get them with Grandmaster Marks or just craft them right if you have 500 crafting for Weaponsmithing, Artificer or Huntsman.

However, there are other ways to obtain Ascended Weapons without Grandmaster Marks or Crafting.

If you have either one of the expansions; Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire or End of Dragons, you are able to unlock Elite Specializations. These Elite Specializations come with achievements tied to unique Ascended Weapons.

Under the Specialization Collections tab in your achievement panel you can find your progress on these weapons. Usually, collecting these weapons isn’t too hard. They require some effort but it does not really cost you anything except for some time. Most of the objectives you need to complete and items you have to collect are rather easy. Therefore, I suggest completing these achievements for an Ascended Weapon.

The Weapon Skin you get from these achievements are unique and can only be obtained by completing these achievements. Want to give it a try? Check out the video below! This describes the entire process in detail!

How to get Ascended Trinkets?

Ascended Trinkets are easy to acquire. Start collecting these first!

Obtaining Ascended Trinkets with Laurels

Ascended Trinkets can be earned by just logging in daily. That’s it! Upon logging in, you get Laurels on specific days. These Laurels can then be exchanged for Ascended Trinkets in Lion’s Arch.

You can see when you get your next set of Laurels by scrolling down in your achievement tab and look for the bag of Laurels. For 20 to 40 Laurels you can already claim an Ascended Trinket or Ring. The amount of Laurels you have to exchange depends on the type of Trinket, Ring or Accessory you are going for.

Obtaining Ascended Trinkets with Guild Missions

If your guild actively hosts Guild Missions you can use the Guild Commendations you earned to get Ascended Trinkets. At the Guild Commendation Trader in your Guild Hall or Lion’s Arch you can exchange the Guild Commendations for Ascended Trinkets.

Obtaining Ascended Trinkets with PvP or World vs. World

Are you into PvP or World vs. World? Then you can also exchange tokens from these gamemodes at vendors in the Hearts of the Mists or any World vs. World map.

How to get an Ascended Backpack?

The last slot we have not talked about is the Ascended Backpack slot.

Your best and cheapest bet to get an Ascended Backpack is by completing collector’s achievements in Path of Fire or Heart of Thorns. For example completing the Lightbringer’s Pack Achievement in Heart of Thorns or the Raise the Banners achievement in Path of Fire.

The first and only Ascended Backpack back in the day was Ad Infinitum. This backpack can be obtained by playing a lot of Fractals of the Mists.

What piece of Ascended Gear you should you get first?

The First Ascended items you want to collect are the Ascended Trinkets. These are by far the easiest to acquire. Also, the stats from Ascended Trinkets are better than the stats of some Ascended Armor pieces.

For your next Ascended item, you want to go for an Ascended Weapon. For the same reason as the trinkets you want to get an Ascended Weapon next. They are somewhat harder to acquire than trinkets but offer you the highest stat increase next to your trinkets.

With Ascended Trinkets and a Ascended Weapon set you are already halfway there without spending a lot of gold and effort. With just Ascended Trinkets and Ascended Weapons you can start participating in Tier 2 Fractals if you have the correct amount of Agony Resistance.

If you are ready to invest a little more and take your character’s effectiveness to the next level,
you can start getting Ascended armor with the methods described before.

And once all of that is done, go for the Ascended Backpack. Save that for last!

To summarize, get your Ascended Gear in the following order:

• Ascended Trinkets
• Ascended Weapon set
• Ascended Armor
• Ascended Backpack

On what character or profession should you get Ascended Gear first?

Let’s figure out which character you should prioritize on when getting Ascended Gear. Do you already know which character you want to gear up first?

Really? Good!

Well, continue reading anyway, there might be something useful in here.

Let’s have a look at an example. Do you play an Elementalist as your main profession but want to start playing Raids? Then it might be wise to not get Ascended Armor for your Elementalist just yet.

Why not?

Elementalist is a difficult profession to play in Raids. You have to execute your rotation perfectly in order to be effective as an Elementalist. Therefore, I suggest choosing easier roles to start playing endgame content with. Take for example the Dragonhunter power DPS build.
Your armor, weapons and trinkets need to have the Berserker stats to be effective with this build. Also, it’s easy to play and execute. This way, you can get the maximum benefit from Ascended Gear.

Transfer armor between different characters

Did you choose to get Berserker stats on your Guardian and want to play another easy role? You can easily transfer that armor set to another character because Ascended Gear is account bound, not character bound!

And if you decide you don’t want to play with Berseker Ascended Gear again, you can easily change the stats on a Ascended Armor and Weapons in the Mystic Forge.
Any runes and sigils you have applied on armor and weapons will be lost when you change the stats. Keep that in mind.

These are just one of the few awesome perks of Ascended Armor. And next to that, you can transfer it between other characters of the same Armor class. For example, use the gear of your Guardian on your Warrior or use the gear from your Elementalist on your Necromancer.
This only works between professions of the same armor class. For example, you cannot use the armor of your Thief, a medium armor class, on your Elementalist, a light armor class.

If you plan to rush into endgame PvE as fast as possible with your Ascended gear, check out which role you want to play first. Then pick your choice based around that. Your main character can survive in open world PvE with just Exotic gear, don’t worry about that!

Got a question about Ascended Gear? Leave a comment!