Weapons?

Again this is a newb question, but how are unique weapons and gear shown?

example:
grey - plain
green - good
blue - superior
purple - epic

or is there another way to tell?

Thanks

Serius

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Rarity

This should answer all your questions.

From order of rarity:

Grey
Blue
Purple
Gold

Greens, are the boss unique's. Now, what are better and what aren't, greens and golds are the best because they're usually the ones that can be fully moded and have the complete stats, but between those, color alone doesn't mean much.

Unique items generally have their description written in green writing look here for complete lists of unique items by campaign. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Unique_items

their are no epic weapons in gw.

even the "best" weapons are only marginally better than the rest...

- Gold weapons vary wildly in value, in general the most valuable will have a good skin and be fully moddable. You can find golds anywhere from 700g to well over a million. Most are available cheaper than what you see people selling them for, for example I got q9 Legendary swords for 10k and 5k when they often sell for 30-40k.

- Greens come max modded but are unchangeable, often have good skins, and are universally worth about 5k.

- Blue, white, purple, etc are generally worthless unless you're very low level.

I usually use golds for pvp and whatever, most of my weapons collection costed from 5-30k but I may get a hammer that costs 200k.

purple weapons can actually have the same stats as gold weapons, it's just that people perceive golds as being worth more because they're gold. but they're perfectly fine for heros etc. or for you, if you don't care that the text is purple. greens are usually just maxed weapons dropped by bosses that you can't change or dye, so they're typically worth less than the gold weapons they resemble, because people like to mod them and dye them.

Thanks for all the replies!!! huge help!

If what you need is the effectiveness of the weapon, IMHO you should consider whether the weapon has max upgrades or not, and whether the weapon is moddable or not. You can find max upgrades tipically on gold and green weapons, but also on some collectors' blue weapon (check the collectors in the last areas of each chapter). As mentioned before, green weapons have max stats, but aren't moddable.

When i want to obtain a max weapon quickly, and i don't mind the skin or the rarity etc, i always check the collectors (wiki). Then i use the mods that i salvaged through the gameplay. Remember, however, that "Collector rewards cannot be salvaged; however, any runes or upgrade components used on them can be recovered at a chance of destroying the item." (from http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Collector)