• Guild Wars 2 Guides:

Talisman Accessibility (which Ones Tend To Be Easier/cheaper To Get)

By: Vampiresbane

When choosing between pieces of gear and in building towards your stat goals - keep this in mind.
A significant portion of final stats can come from Talismans.

These Talismans fall into one of two groups:

EASY TALISMAN STATS = willpower, intelligence, ballistic skill, strength - EASY for guild to supply
HARD TALISMAN STATS = wounds, initiative, toughness, weapon skill - HARD for guild to supply

*** It will be very very difficult to obtain the HARD TALISMANS in a powerful/permanent form. However, the guild can easily supply you with the talismans in the EASY TALISMANS group ***

::::THEREFORE::::

In an effort to meet the general stat goals listed above for your class, obtain the HARD TALISMAN stats like wounds and initiative and toughness from GEAR whenever possible, and use EASY TALISMANS like strength and intelligence and ballistic skill to augment those stats.

If you obtain your EASY TALISMAN stats through gear and then hope to boost stats like Wounds, Toughness, Initiative, or Weapon Skill (HARD TALISMAN STATS) through Talismans, you will find that very hard to do, and the guild can only supply a very very limited number of those due to the method in which they are produced and the materials needed.

----

For example:

As a salvation warrior priest I look for (in roughly this order) Wounds, Toughness, Initiative, Strength...etc
The first 3 are HARD TALISMAN STATS, whereas Strength is very EASY TALISMAN STAT (but quite popular).

For this reason, I do not seek Strength as a priority on gear - because I can easily add a lot of willpower through talismans, and I need to make sure I achieve my wounds, initiative, toughness goals from gear since that is a lot harder to do through talismans and the guild simply cannot provide them in such numbers. I end up with strength on gear anyhow but it is not my focus.

For instance, I would NOT use a piece that had 40 Strength and nothing else over something that had 18 Strength, 12 Wounds, and 10 Initiative. Being that Wounds and Initiative are HARD TALISMAN stats, they need to take precedence on gear, just like the other HARD TALISMAN stats.