Disclaimer:
It is important to note that these numbers are not the be-all and end-all of the gold per hours of a map, farm, etc. What is considered more valuable to someone, may be considered more or less valuable to another. For these benchmarks, I tried my best to make it as general and realistic as possible for all players. Whether you are a casual player or a hardcore farmer, my goal is provide a foundation and an idea of what kind of money you can potentially make. You may or may not recieve more or less gold than what the benchmark says, but the higher the benchmark the easier it is to make more gold.

How each benchmark is calculated:
All benchmarks are calculated based on at least 1 hour of consistant farming to prove that it's at least an hour of content rather than doing content for 40 minutes and calling it a day. How I farm is based on what type of farm it is.

For map farms (repeatable/daily):
These farms always contain at least a dozen or more players in a squad. This is the bare minimum to spawn champions and to scale events. Squads are always required for benchmarks versus doing it with a small group because I want these benchmarks to be realistic to anyone (guild members, PUGs, semi-organized squads, etc). While the first 10 or more players of the squad are my guildies, I always promote my squad in multiple discords and LFG in-game to allow a sizable amount of PUGs to join.

In terms of events, that also depends on what farm is being tested. If it was a meta-based farm, then most of the route is rotated based on the meta times. But, there are benchmarks that don't deal with metas as much such as Kourna, Tangled Depths, Siren's Landing, etc. These benchmarks don't have a specific route or rotation because the there's no global timer for metas nor are there static events. With these, I've learned how each event functions in the map and which can potentially produce the most profit. I've written up guides and my recommended order of events for each map that hopefully any commander or curious farmer can learn off of. In addition, I've created tools in the Timer section of the website to help with figuring out which event has spawned again.

For gathering farms:
These are all solo. Most farms are consisted of swapping characters to harvest the nodes of the farm, some swapping a lot more than others. All the farms are located at the gathering section of the website. By clicking at each one, you'll find a route that I used. How fast you gather will determine your gold per hour for each run. Most farms have "(w/ Volatile)", which means that I used Glyph of Volatility or Volatile Tools for that run.

For solo farms:
These are all also solo. These farms are consisted of using power-centric classes to burst down mobs quickly. I always use a Reaper, Soulbeast, and/or Ele for these farms. Builds are always raid builds from Snowcrows. On the benchmark page, click on the solo farms to be redirected to their specific pages for routes.

For meta benchmarks:
Each meta is assuming the total duration of when the meta is active. If there's a pre-event or wait time before it officially begins, that time is not included. Gold/Mins is to determine the best money for your time. Don't assume you'll get 90 silver per every minute (as an example) as some metas may offer you all the loot at the end or in the middle, etc. Gathering any chests after the meta is included for time.

Account stats:
- Gold find: 122%
- Karma gain: 16%
- XP gain: 24%
- Magic find: 313%
- Chef 500 - This is to obtain Cuts of Quality Red Meat and Variental Seeds from herbs. It is only required to have the Charr and Sylvari portion of the achievement, Gourmet Training, completed to have access.

Buffs:
- Hero Banner + Spirit Banner
- Guild Tavern: 10% Map Bonus for map benchmarks, 20% gathering for gathering benchmarks, 10% Magic Find for solo benchmarks.
- Ascended Food
- Halloween utility food that offers Magic Find
- Volatile Tools for all farms (unless said otherwise). For map farms, this does not make a significant difference in the gold per hour, but just an extra bonus.

Currency that are monetized:
- Unbound Magic
- Volatile Magic
- Trade Contracts
- Spirit Shards (in a separate benchmark)

How they are calculated:
The value of Unbound Magic, Volatile Magic are automatically calculated by whatever conversion is currently the best to perform a better profit: page link. Individual values are calculated by buying shipments/bundles, taking cost and TP tax into consideration, and dividing it per currency spent. The value of Trade Contacts are in the same method, but with every different kind of Trade Caches and picking the one with the highest value per Trade Contract.

Spirit Shards:
This is simply the worth after converting T5 -> T6 materials in the mystic forge. Unlike the previous currencies, the value is the average of all the T5 -> T6 conversions (excluding Dusts) rather than the highest profit. Daily conversions are best located at GW2Efficiency. The benchmark including Spirit Shards are seperate because while you can obtain spirit shards in every farm, you generally don't get the materials to do the conversion from that farm. But, when you do have the materials (outside of farms), it's best to practice doing the conversions to earn more valuable materials.

For most things on this list, there's no doubt some items are worth more than just the selling price tag from the TP. For example, materials needed to make Mystic Clovers are worth more because they can be used to craft legendary weapons in the long-term for crazy profit. In this case, I don't count them towards my benchmarks because they're a long-term profit. Refining those materials also take some time to craft. The benchmarks presented are the gold per hour from/near that instance of a run. I say "near" because some currencies can be exchanged into gold nearly instantaneously or quickly such as Volatile Magic. Here are the list of things not monitized:

- Ascended materials
- Legendary materials
- General refinement (excluding Spirit Shards)
- Exotic drops (gear, recipes, minis)
- Rare gathering materials (Maguuma Lilies, Freshwater Pearl)

This is where it gets complicated. As said earlier, some may find that the list above can be considered in the gold per hour while others may not. That's up to you to decide what is worth it for you. I just hope my benchmarks give you that foundation to gauge what kind of gold you'll be making.