How does the stat gear grind work at level 80?

[LonestarHero]

I'm about to ding level 80 and would like to know my best course of action for acquiring level 80 gear with max stats (I don't care about cosmetics at this time). Should I just shop for rare level 80's on the trading post or is there something else I should be doing? I don't recall dungeon grinding being part of this process but maybe I'm wrong.

Since I typically run minion master on my necro, I suppose that toughness and healing power are the stats to go for.

[Valeron]

If you have gold, the trade post would be the simplest way of getting your level 80 exotic gear. Besides that you can craft your gear (or have someone craft it), buy a set with karma in Orr, or get one of the dungeon sets by farming the explorables. Different ways of going about it, all your choice really.

[Larynx]

Karma -> Exotics
Crafting -> Exotics
WvWvW -> Exotics
Gold -> Exotics
Dungeons -> Exotics

Karma -> 42k a piece
Crafting -> 400 in discipline
WvWvW -> Several hundred Badge's of Honor
Gold -> Anywhere from 1-100 gold
Dungeons -> They're changing the system, but right now iirc it's like 5 runs a minimum or something for the lowest pieces

I don't really see the need to gear up ultra quickly in this game. Yeah, exotics are nice, but you can do any content with just level 80 blues and greens. In my opinion, the whole "gearing up" paradigm is just going to ruin the experience for you. When people are level 79, they're exploring all the nooks and crannies and just having a blast in the world. "Ooh, what's this? What's this? What this over there?"

Yet as soon as they hit level 80, it's just, "Oh... well okay. I'm at the endgame. Lets gear up."

And then they complain that the game isn't fun anymore.

I don't find grinding or gearing up fun, and I know that there's tons of people who are fully decked out in exotics or have capped their karma and are still enjoying the game. But this is just my general observation for the majority of people.

[carnifex2005]

The karma cap is 1 million. Wow. I can't believe people can get to it. I'm at 80 for the past couple of weeks and I'm at 58,000 karma.

As for the armor, here's a nice site that shows all of the exotic class armor and how it would look like on your character.

I just crafted my armor. It was fairly cheap since I was maxed in leatherworking and I had most of the materials from leveling and map completion.

[Artorias]

I prefer the crafting method. I got 400 in Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing in about 4 hours each once I hit 80. I had 90% of the materials (except for the Iron... SO MUCH IRON...) already in my collectable storage. All you really have to buy at that point is a few extra mats and the secondary ingredients for making ingots (tin, coal, primordium), which won't cost you anything once you sell the stuff you make. The plus side to this is the exotics you make are 1. Super cheap. 2. The same stats as any other exotics. 3. You can choose the stat combinations (Ravagers, Berserkers, Knights, etc). and 4. You can just transmute it into whatever you want it to look like later on!

The Karma/Cultural/Dungeon is all the same stats as above, just with better cosmetics for transmutation.

[Newbryn]

The karma cap is 1 million. Wow. I can't believe people can get to it. I'm at 80 for the past couple of weeks and I'm at 58,000 karma.

As for the armor, here's a nice site that shows all of the exotic class armor and how it would look like on your character.

I just crafted my armor. It was fairly cheap since I was maxed in leatherworking and I had most of the materials from leveling and map completion.

If you do wvw its the best way to get karma much faster than waiting for de's in the regular game.

[Lugor]

I could be wrong, but don't you have to be winning something in WvW to get karma verses killing killed in the zerg or waiting in the que for it.

[Abstieg]

I could be wrong, but don't you have to be winning something in WvW to get karma verses killing killed in the zerg or waiting in the que for it.

You'll bounce back and forth between objectives even with the zerg fairly quickly.

[Newbryn]

I could be wrong, but don't you have to be winning something in WvW to get karma verses killing killed in the zerg or waiting in the que for it.

you just need to be able to cap points at most kill dolyaks that kinda thing if you're in a small grp it really helps.