Guild Wars 2

Profession balance is in no small part tied to the ability to spec and respec quickly to meet the challenges of a play mode or even encounter (PvE or WvW).

Ascended gear being so costly and time consumptive to create artificially limits build diversity and tweaking on the fly. You create a single set with single set stats.

The likelihood is you have 3+ sets of exotic gear and MOST players will not match that for ascended gear.

Unintentionally, you wind up with players “sticking to builds” they have the greatest gear for. That hurts fun and it hurts balance.

Ascended gear needs to come down in costs dramatically!!!!

it’s like those old school MMOs that don’t let you ever change your build

You got a point, but can you really imagine them to change anything about it?

Make it cheaper to make. Make it all Account Bound. Make the stats changeable like Legendaries and give Legendaries some other perk. I don’t know exactly what they should do, but they need to do something.

At first I rolled my eyes at this, but it actually makes a fair amount of sense. The price gap between a full exotic set and a full ascended set is WAY high atm. This isn’t even accounting for the cost of reaching 500 mastery in any given crafting discipline

reikken.4961:

it’s like those old school MMOs that don’t let you ever change your build

It’s like in the old school MMOs – “gear grind” and “gear matters” ^^

i like to play wvw. i also like to do fractals. these are conflicting interests because of ascended gear.

first, i dont really want 1800+ toughness in fractals. nor do i want full zerk armor in wvw. but making a second set is impractical from a gold, laurel, carrying capacity, and hassle-to-reequip standpoint.
second, i wouldnt really mind using my wvw gear in fractals if i had a reasonable option to obtain high amounts of AR without overwriting the laurels i spent on wvw infusions.

the current state of ascended gear encourages you to specialize your build and focus on 1 game mode. and not to play the whole game. i cant imagine anet wants us to be harassed, spurned, or unwilling to try new things because of the choices we made for our favorite method of playing. but thats how ascended gear makes me feel currently.

they really should just make ascend gear stats able to be changed out like legends so no one needs to worry about there class being nerfed when they make changes.
and no one needs to worry about spending an insane amount of time/money just to get a second set of ascend gear !
and no one wants them to come out with legend armor and amulets because all that means is more grinding on a game that says u don’t need to grind !
or if they do come out with legend armor and amulets… it should be REALLY easy to craft a full set after u get a FULL ascend set . just so we can swap out our stats with out spending double time on everything lol

ANET wants to make money here. So make everyone happy. Create a new gem store item that allows you to change the stats of an ascended armor piece. Something like 500 gems for 6 uses.

Oh, and I agree with others who say that it should be account bound. I personally would love to see the elimination of soul bound from just about everything .