I was smart enough to find a niche, I struggled to craft ascended gear when it came out, it got easier and easier, now its complete joke, u can get it by logging in. it was needless all of the issues i described affect veteran players so new players can have participation trophies, the change was uncessesarry and it just ruins the enjoyment for many players who like to craft things.
Bad news- current meta qFB is running full ritualist gear.. Good news- proper build and execution >>>>> gear. Just played around with en.gw2skills.net a bit. You can basicly run full Viper's gear, add a sigil of concentration, use some +boon duration food (looking at you, Peppermint Oil)You can craft exotic Marauder's armor- the insignia recipe is in any crafting vendor's list. It's kinda misleading as it's one of the few HoT stats that doesn't need a map-grind to start crafting. Iirc, you just do a discovery with the usual armor pieces, insignia, and 5 ecto to make the actual armor piece; you don't need an armor recipe. Technically you don't need Ascended gear for anything aside from Fractals of the Mists, that set of exotic armor will do you just fine. It honestly doesn't matter what you level up, but I would recommend looking into what masteries you need for certain story bits (you don't need any for core, but Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire require some specific masteries to progress)
Yes, Ascended gear was a departure from how gear was handled in the original GW game. So was putting a large percentage of character stats on gear. So was having 13-16 pieces of gear to fully gear a character for land combat (plus more for underwater, if anyone cares anymore). I was a big fan of the original game.
88IfmB.