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The Ultimate Shiny

Every now and then, some insane jackpot makes the news and the question inevitably gets asked: What would you do if you won the lottery? This is also a slow time of year for the news business. Government leaders tend to pack up to spend the holidays with their families; leaving news programs scrambling for something to talk about. Occasionally, stories of the ultimate Christmas gift are broadcast.

This trend also exists in MMO's. There is some notion of the "ultimate shiny". When Guild Wars 2 came out, the prospect of legendary weapons were very appealing. Very expensive but also very appealing.

But we players are a fickle bunch. We soon got tired of legendary weapons. So ArenaNet gave us a legendary trinket - Aurora. But we got bored with that too.

Then legendary armor https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor was introduced and everyone went oooh and ahhh. This lasted all of a few minutes when people realized that this wasn't going to be something that elites and the rich would have by the end of the day.

In this series, we are going to take a look at legendary armor and how realistic it is to obtain.

In this series, we are looking at the feasibility of obtaining legendary armor. Before we begin, realize that this journey will not be easy. It will also not be cheap. Should you undergo this journey, be prepared to spend lots of time, in-game gold and effort.

You might be asking - why even bother with legendary armor in the first place? They are not better than ascended armor - your stats are not increased. While that is indeed true, it does allow for stat-swapping so when ArenaNet nerfs your favorite build, you can change the stats and play your next favorite build.

They also allow you to re-use runes. You simply insert the new rune and the old rune magically appears in your inventory instead of being destroyed. This allows you to share the same set of armor across characters with the same armor weight class - heavy, medium and light. This same applies towards agony infusions; so you can have multiple characters go through fractals and not worry about agony infusions - the old ones appear in your inventory.

There are three (3) avenues of obtaining legendary armor - through PvE, WvW and PvP. We will discuss each one separately. However, each method has some similarities - common components and ingredients; which we will discuss in this post.

Since there are six (6) components of armor, each one of these needs to be done six (6) times in order to have a complete set.

This doesn’t look too intimidating, does it? Most of the items on this list can be purchased for gold. But this is the just the beginning. We will continue next time.

In our continuing series on legendary armor, we are going to examine the PvE version - Refined Armor - notably the costs associated which are not shared with its PvP or WvW counterparts.

50 Provisioner Tokens - These are obtained by trading certain rare crafted items to a Heart of Thorns vendor. The trick with this particular item is that you can only obtain one of these tokens per day per account. Naturally, these items are account-bound. So this will take you a minimum of 300 days, or ten (10) months, to obtain enough of these tokens for the full set.

25 Legendary Insights - These items are obtained by opening a raid chest. But that said, you can only open a raid chest once per week. So you are doing 150 raid encounters to obtain the complete set.

5 Auric Ingots / 5 Reclaimed Metal Plates / 5 Chak Eggs

These components are account bound but not difficult to get.

Gift of the Pact - Each of these can be purchased with a stack of map currency - Airship Parts / Lumps of Aurillium / Ley-Line Crystals

Envoy Armor - This is obtained by doing the collection achievement. You unlock the collection by defeating a raid boss. This can be particularly difficult as this requires various raid bosses to be defeated as well as doing some do X while fighting said raid boss.

So what's the bottom line? If you started the provisioner tokens on January 1st and did this once a day, Mad King Thorn would be making his annual appearance before you can finish the collection. If one is proficient with raids and has a steady party willing to help, this could be feasible.

In our continuing series on legendary armor, we will take a closer look at the WvW method of obtaining the ultimate shiny.

For the WvW version, there is a three (3) step process - get the exotic, then purchase the ascended and then upgrade that to legendary.

The only way to obtain the exotic level of Triumphant Hero armor is to complete the WvW reward track Triumphant Armor Box and then you only get one (1) piece - meaning the complete set requires six (6) completions.

Once the exotic level has been obtained, then you can purchase level 2, the ascended level. We would recommend sticking with the Triumphant Hero Armor. You can purchase the Mistforged Triumphant armor, but that costs 2,620 skirmish tickets versus 1,310 for the "regular" version. In addition, you need to be level WvW level 2,000 before you can purchase the full set. YIKES!

So how do you get these skirmish tickets anyway? In WvW, matches are decided in five (5) minute increments. Each player in the "winning" realm gets five (5) pips, the "losing" realm gets three (3) pips and the middle realm gets four (4).

Bonus pips are awarded for "commanding a squad of 5 or more" - 1 pip per match. Your individual war rank - from 0-7 based on your WvW level. If you completed "wood division' the previous week, you get an additional pip and if you are on an outnumbered map, you get an additional five (5). Needless to say, outnumbered maps are the place to be.

Each tier that a person obtains grants a number of skirmish claim tickets - ranging from 3 to 20.

So what's the bottom line here?

Most of the items here will be obtained so long as you stick to the path - Gifts of Battle, Triumphant Armor, Badges of Honor and Heroic Tokens will be obtained. Skirmish tickets however, that's the time constraint. Because there are only 12 matches per hour, this will be your limiting factor. Needing 7,880 for the "normal" and 9,190 for the Mistforged version, you do the math. Assuming you do WvW an hour a day and average five (5) pips per `match', you get 60 pips an hour or 420 per week. That gets you around 82 skirmish tickets per week. This translates to 96 weeks - basically two years!!!!

What about bull rushing? One can only obtain 365 skirmish tickets a week -consisting of 1,450 pips. Again, averaging 5 pips per `match', this would take you over 24 hours - per week - for 21 weeks - over 4 months.

Needless to say, only the very dedicated or those who have substantial WvW play should consider this path.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Skirmish_Claim_Ticket

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skirmish_reward_track

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triumphant_Armor_Box

In our continuing series on The Ultimate Shiny, we will look at the PvP requirements for obtaining legendary armor.

As with WvW, there are a couple of ways to obtain legendary armor via PvP. Unlike WvW, you do not need to purchase the exotic version before the ascended armor. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Of these three (3) types of armor, we would recommend the Ardent Glorious Armor. That just requires 13 gold, 1,200 Ascended Shards of Glory, 20 Grandmaster Marks and 1,500 Shards of Glory.

That may sound like a lot but one can craft the Grandmaster Marks and purchase Shards of Glory. The real problem is the Ascended Shards of Glory as that is the time-limiting factor.

So how does one obtain these Ascended Shards of Glory - and PvP League Tickets while we are at it? While there are PvP matches, the matches need to be "ranked". Unranked or practice arenas will not count towards this goal. These matches need to be played while "in season". A PvP season is eight (8) weeks and then a 3 week break for re-balancing when a new season begins anew.

Each PvP season "meta" awards 100 PvP League Tickets. So one will need to complete three (3) metas in order to get a full set of legendary armor. Each meta also gives 400 Ascended Shards of Glory. This would indicate that one would need to complete nine (9) seasons or about 2 years. Yikes!

However, one can "accelerate" or farm Ascended Shards of Glory by repeating the last chest in PvP reward track. Spread out over three (3) seasons, one would need to repeat that track four times per season. 400*3 = 1,200 along with the 400*3 metas so in approximately eight (8) months.

How long would it be to obtain that many Ascended Shards of Glory? Like WvW, "pips" are obtained by participating. Winning means you obtain more pips than losing but even if you lost each and every match, you still will obtain the same rewards as those who win each and every match - the difference being the number of matches needed.

To do the meta across three (3) seasons one needs to obtain 540 additional pips above and beyond the meta. Breaking that down to a daily figure, 7*8 = 56 days, would be about 10 pips per day. This is achieved by one win or three losses - again, over and above the meta pace. Our rule of thumb is to play five (5) matches a day. With a 2 win and 3 loss record, one obtains 30 pips per day which should get enough to get your Ultimate Shiny.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_League

As we conclude our series on the Ultimate Shiny - Legendary Armor - let's recap the difficultly level for each method.

PvE: 10 months of daily item trading, 150 raid chests and collections.

WvW: Almost two (2) years of playing WvW for an hour each day.

PvP: 8 months of active daily PvP when seasons are active. No playing needed outside of seasons.

As we said from the onset, this is a long, arduous and expensive process. You could make an argument that if one plays Guild Wars 2 consistently, one would be able to simply be able to obtain the Ultimate Shiny anyway. But that assumes one has been on this trek without knowing they were on this road.

We started this series asking what is the Ultimate Shiny? Like with all shinies, they appeal to some people and have no appeal to others. Whether or not this particular shiny appeals to you, at least you know the costs beforehand.

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