The beauty of GW2 is that the endgame content begins at level 30 with the first dungeon. But if you don't need to get level 80 to experience end game, then what is there to do at level 80? Is there anything exclusive to level 80s? I have done the math to tell you what you can do to keep yourself busy as a level 80.
DUNGEONS (Token Numbets Outdated)
Well, there are eight dungeons spread throughout Tyria. Each dungeon has the story mode, which follows the now broken up guild of heroes as they try to regain what they one had, and each dungeon has an explorable mode which has three different paths to chose that decides which bosses you fight. That totals to 32 different dungeon runs. Dungeons in GW2 are very difficult and can either be fun or frustrating to try and master them, depending on your personality. Either way, they are hard, and it is a goal in itself to try and do them all once.
Each dungeon gives you a cash reward at the end (maybe about 25 silver in the high level ones, and up to 20 from selling junk you get), and experience. You may or may not turn a profit depending on how much you had spent on repairs. You may also come across rare items from chests, which you can sell or use, benefiting yourself even more.
PvP
In GW2, there are two types of PvP WvWvW, which pits your server and two others in a three way battle for the control of forts and towers scattered around the WvWvW map. Succeeding in WvWvW PvP earns your server benefits, such as increased chance at critical gathering, increased money per kill, and increased maximum health. No matter what level you are in the game, upon entering WvWvW, you become level 80, but can still gain experience for your PvE level. This is a good alternative to crafting, because if you don't craft to fill in the experience gaps, WvWvW can do it.
There is also structured PvP. This is the PvP found in most games, where there are instanced battlegrounds where you are put into one of two teams and you fight for control of points across the battlegrounds. In structured PvP, you do not gain experience towards your PvE level, but instead, you gain ranks, starting at rank 1. Every 10 levels, you move up from being called "Bunny" to other names such as "Dolyak". As you progress, you gain access to better looking armor. Each peice of armor in SPvP (Structured PvP) is just as good as any other, but it all looks more impressive as you gain ranks. This is nice because then your success is based off of skill rather than how many hours you have invested into the game to obtain the best armor set. The armor skins you get is all random, the chances for cooler stuff increases with the quality of the chest. At the "Rabbit" level, you can buy:
Bronze rabbit chest- 200 points
Silver rabbit chest- 500 points
Gold rabbit chest- 1000 points
The more expensive the chest, the better your chances are at getting better looking armor. Your rank in SPvP is shared account wide, and so is your armor. The armor storage system in identical to the collectible tab for crafting materials. You can store armor in your locker on one character and take it out on another. This ensures that if you are a guardian and you get a bow, it isnt completely useless.
CRAFTING
The max level for crafting is 400. At this level you can use high level materials to make high level items. A Weaponsmith can make exotic and legendary items with 400 crafting skill, and any other crafter can do the same with their items that they make. This is one way of obtaining good gear, if you don't like grinding for other sets (Explained in great detail next). Crafting is a good way to make money, which can also be used to buy cultural armor sets. You can also find specific mystic forge recipes on the internet so you can make powerful items without having to learn the craft. For instance, say you want to make an exotic weapon, but you are a tailor, well, buy the required materials from the TP, and drop it all into the mystic forge, then you have got yourself an exotic weapon. This method is also good for people who despise crafting.
WORLD COMPLETION
Tyria is filled with great scenery. It just wouldn't be right to not see it all. You can always go to all of the zones you have not played yet and complete every Heart, do every Skill point, snap a pic of every Vista, and cross off every POI. For you "Smell the roses" types, exploring is something that you can do, and make a lot of money for it, too.
EXOTIC ARMOR SETS (DOES NOT INCLUDE WEAPONS) (This is where it gets mathematical) (Methods of Gaining Karma Outdated)
So, when you are level 80, your goal is to get the best gear in the game. It looks cool, and works great. GW2 is all about cosmetics and if ArenaNet has anything to say about it, you will look awesome by the end of it all. But of course, you will not get all of this without doing some work. Luckily, there are a lot of different armor sets that can be obtained by a lot of different methods.
A) KARMA
-First, you can go to Orr, and fight in the everlasting turf battle against the undead. Territory is always shifting. There are always camps to be defended and camps to be taken. You can go to fight bosses with groups of other people, and each time you do one of these events you get karma. You get around 350 karma for each successful event that you obtain a gold medal on. Now, there are multiple armor sets for each armor type. There are multiple heavy armor sets to be bought with karma, each one has different stats, but each one looks the same. The same goes for light and medium armor, too. A full set costs 210000 karma points. lets do the math. If each set costs 210000 karma points, and you get 350 for each event (assuming you always succeed with a gold metal), you will do a minimum of 600 events. After those 600 events, you will have gotten your set of exotic armor. Do not worry, though, there are other ways to get good armor too.
B) DUNGEON TOKENS
- What if you don't want to keep doing events for karma? Well, there is always the dungeon method. There are 8 completely separate dungeons, and each one has a unique set of armor for each armor type (All equally powerful, except for AC and CM whos armor sets are lower level). As I stated before, there are 32 different dungeon runs that you can go into. But only the Explorable modes of these dungeons drop dungeon tokens, so we are left with 24 different dungeon runs to get exotic gear with. What are dungeon tokens? They are a form of currency that you get upon doing certain bosses in dungeons and completing dungeons. Each dungeon (AC, CoE, CM) drops a token specific to that dungeon. CoE drops Knowledge Crystal. Within CoE explorable mode, there is still three different paths to be taken. You get a few bonus tokens for completing a path once each day, so you can get up to three bonuses a day for each dungeon. You get about 60 tokens with the bonus, and if you do each path once a day, you can end up with 180 tokens a day. You can get more a day, but doing each path once a day is about 2 hours of dungeon running provided that all three groups aren't terrible.
Now for the math. One set of level 80 Exotic dungeon gear costs 1380 tokens. Of course, you do not have to buy the whole set at once, but to keep this as short as possible, i'm gonna use the whole set as an example. So you chose your favorite set, you need 1380 for that set. You do each path once a day for a total of 180 tokens a day. That means you will have to grind that one dungeon for 8 days (7.66667 to be exact), and run it a total of 23 times. Now just for fun, that is 46 hours of dungeons. If you do the same dungeon for at least 2 hours a day for 8 days, you will have the best armor in the game.
C) CRAFTING
If you don't like killing things to get your armor, there is always crafting. Once you get your crafting level to 400, you can start to learn the recipes to make the exotic armor sets. You can either find the money to buy the mats, in which case you might wanna look into just buying the items at the TP, or you can farm them yourself. It is completely up to you.
D) CULTURAL
Cultural armor is a set of armor that only your race can get. It is not as powerful as all the rest of the sets, but if you like the look of it, you can use transmogrification stones to change the stats and keep the skins. Each set costs about 120 gold, maybe a bit more. Now, until the economy fixes itself, 120 gold is almost an unreasonable amount of money. Fast traveling costs a lot, and so does everything else, but if you do end up getting the set, you can walk around Lion's Arch and let everyone know that you are richer than thou.
E) LEGENDARIES
You might have noticed I have not been talking about Legendaries. That is simply because Exotic and Legendary items have the same stats, but legendary looks cooler. You can craft legendary weapons with other weapons and items that you buy with various currencies. This will be a guild effort. Look on the guild wars 2 wiki for a list of things you need. Its incredible to say the least. I made a post on this forum about working together to get a legendary for the guild (also includes a list and where to get each thing)
ALTS
Do yourself a favor. Do not try to do everything that you have read above. GW2 is all about the journey, and there are 5 races, 3 origin choices, 3 regret choices, and 3 orders which have their own choices within them. That means there are like 135 different choices. Or something like that. Go make a new character, see the world from a different point of view. Get an exotic armor set, then start a new alt. That's the beauty of the game, replayability.
GUILDS
You have NOR, but there is a special feature that GW2 has that other games do not. In GW2, you can join up to 4 guilds at one time. You can only represent one guild at a time, which means that you can only gain influence points for one at a time, and see chat for one at a time. But with the ability to join multiple guilds, you can have NOR for a main guild, then join a PvP guild and represent that one for when you want to find a group to PvP with, join a PvE guild to represent when you want a group to run dungeons with, and just represent NOR the rest of the time. This makes it easier to grind the rewards you want and have the minimum amount of problems while doing so.
TIME (Completely False Now)
Alright, That is all you need to know about what there is to do at level 80 in GW2. But just for fun, lets figure the time it takes to obtain every armor set. Lets start with what we already know. To get each dungeon set for your armor type, it would take you 128 days of farming. If each event takes you 5 minutes, and you succeed with a gold medal on each one, you will be looking at around 15 days of events. That means you will need 137 days of grinding time in order to get each set of dungeon gear and each karma set for your class. Keep in mind that that is not including the time it takes you to do everything else in the game, it is only the time spent doing that activity. 137+ days of doing that in more than enough to keep everyone busy for the rest of their lives, or at least until the first expansion. But look on the bright side, at least you have a guild to keep you company as you do it. Good Luck, and happy hunting. Hail*
NOR/Some of this information may be false because of updates, but I will try to update it every once in a while. the dungeon token section is subject to the most change.
