Guild Wars 2

Heres the Exotic Pistol with its Damage and Bleed Damage versus Ascended Pistol and its Damage and Bleed Damage.

How in the world can Anet justify how they have screwed cond build players? This is a freakin joke.

Anyone other than me just slightly upset about this???

Has anyone heard if they are gonna buff this or did I just waste my time with crafting this mess?

Um… As far as I know ascended are not meant to be a huge increase in stats and in any case the problem with condition in the game is not the damage, it’s the number of stacks that you can place on a foe, kind of renders it useless to have a party with 2+ condition stackers.

Fine maybe they can increase the damage of the bleeds but it won’t be increased for a lot. But hey look on the bright side, that +2 bleed damage will surely make foes drop faster ;D

ghost.3208:

But hey look on the bright side, that +2 bleed damage will surely make foes drop faster ;D

Exactly my point, Its very OP

Your complaint is the reason that most intelligent players are not falling all over themselves to craft Ascended weapons….

Well (while mostly useless) at least you do get the 5% increase in base damage.

Also you may want to skip ascended armor all together then. I think the difference in the main stat (for all 6 items being ascended vs. exotic) is ~20-25 or so. So, +1 bleed damage! (and only like a ~1-2%DR increase from the extra armor, but that will depend on your build)

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your complaint is the reason that most intelligent players are not falling all over themselves to craft Ascended weapons….

You act like its an act of God to craft ascended, its not difficult. and yes the elite players are crafting ascended especially dps build….

Yes some people did mention that ascended weapons would suit zerker builds more than condition builds, even before ascended was released. Nothing is going to change so don’t lose sleep over it.

Thief? Condition? LoL. What about healing power? 300 healing power give you ~300 hp from 30 seconds cooldown heal! Power + precision is only viable build for thief.

If you don’t do high level fractals there is really no reason to strain for ascended. And even then you can live without it, people have been doing so. It’s an illusion of progression that is conveniently a MASSIVE gold sink.

The ascended weapons only really shine in builds where the weapon damage modifier really, REALLY matters.

Let me give you a few examples:

I have an Engineer who received my first ascended weapon, in this case, a rifle. It was primarily for 2 reasons, one-I leveled huntsman first, so I could process leather, metal and wood daily for the ascended mats, and two-it’s so pretty. When I go into kits, I don’t get the ascended damage bonus, so this rifle is mostly for situations where high ranged auto-attack damage is nice. Which frankly, isn’t that often.

My Guardian got a Sword & Hammer, and I am working on a focus (slowly), it is a flat increase to DPS for your weapon skills in a crit/zerk build. The weapon damage is one of the multipliers.

My Ele got a scepter and a staff, both zerk, for direct damage and crit damage builds. The staff is an anti-siege weapon (as is the scepter to a lesser degree), but since I use a LH build, most of my DPS is set at exotic weapon damage.

My Theif got a dagger from the Valk chest that dropped in wvw, mostly for a burst build that I play in small groups or when I want to bait people away from targets to chase me.

I did build one rabid pistol for my engineer, and immediately realized the problem, it just isn’t enough extra damage to warrant any more gold spent on it for ANY condition build except maybe rampager or celestial.

I would advise waiting for the armor, and upgrading your trinkets in the mean time for condition builds. Save your gold and bloodstone dust for those tasty, tasty toxic utility buffs.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your complaint is the reason that most intelligent players are not falling all over themselves to craft Ascended weapons….

couldn’t help but smirk at this comment. Its exactly how I felt when Ascended got released. realized its may be a whole 2-3% increase from exotic stats (didn’t actually do the math) and after seeing the apperence just proceed to throw all my current materials in the tp for some nice shiny gold.

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your complaint is the reason that most intelligent players are not falling all over themselves to craft Ascended weapons….

couldn’t help but smirk at this comment. Its exactly how I felt when Ascended got released. realized its may be a whole 2-3% increase from exotic stats (didn’t actually do the math) and after seeing the apperence just proceed to throw all my current materials in the tp for some nice shiny gold.

You should have done the math. The fact that ascended do not offer too much for condi players is not because the items themselves don’t increase stats that much, but because of problems inherent to condition builds in general. Yes, they offer the most to dps builds, but even pure bunkers will find ascended gear to be a significant improvement. And of course, in PvE, dps still is the king,

Trueshots.9456:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your complaint is the reason that most intelligent players are not falling all over themselves to craft Ascended weapons….

You act like its an act of God to craft ascended, its not difficult. and yes the elite players are crafting ascended especially dps build….

My comment wasn’t about the difficulty to craft. I was stating that the performance increase is relatively small compared to Exotics, so there is no reason to rush the process.

Ascended equipment is a valid long term goal for any player. Sorry if my “intelligent” adjective struck a nerve, but “Elite” != “Smart” in all cases.

If you don’t do high level fractals there is really no reason to strain for ascended. And even then you can live without it, people have been doing so. It’s an illusion of progression that is conveniently a MASSIVE gold sink.

100% correct assessment.

While I agree it is not a huge difference in flat weapon damage, it is an addition to the final DPS output in any crit-damage based build. But how much? Lets do some math…

cue 60s background music here

Here’s the basic damage calculation:
Damage done = (Weapon Strength) x Power x (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Is this calculation, Weapons Strength is the damage number on the weapon itself, and it not diluted with a base number, like power is. So a 5% increase is weapon damage would boost the first of 3 multiplicative increases in the final damage number, the second being crit calculation, and the third being trait/sigil/rune/potion modifiers.

Let’s plug in some numbers for fun:

Exotic Weapon Damage = 1000, power = 2000, skill coefficient = 1, targets armor = 2600, Crit chance = 50, Crit damage = 150% (base) + 75%(stats).
Base damage output = 769.23
On Crit = 1730.76
With Sigil of Night (+10%) in a Night instance = 1903.84

Ascended Weapon Damage = 1050, power = 2000, skill coefficient = 1, targets armor = 2600, crit chance = 50, Crit damage = 225% (same as the other)
Base Damage Output = 807.69
On Crit = 1817.30
W/ Sigil of night bonus (+10%) = 1999.03

1903.84:1999.03 = 95/100, so it is carrying that 5% bonus through all of the calculations, and scaling with the output.

For min/max players who like to squeeze every last drop of DPS out of their toons, why not. But for anyone playing a non-crit build, or doesn’t care about that extra little 5%, then no, of course it’s not really worth it.

The price is pretty normal. Every MMO out there the top tier is usually 5-10% better than the last but the cost/time investment dwarfs all the other tiers combined.

I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic → ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.

Mystic.5934:

I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic -> ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.

Yep (don’t know if that number is right though), it’s closer to ~13-15% increase in direct damage. Technically all of the stats are getting the same increase, and then theres the extra 5% weapon strength.

The problem is with how well power/precision/crit damage all stack compared to how pretty much every other stat is stand alone (minus some “on crit” effects/sigils/runes).

A similar thing will happen when ascend armor hits, if I recall, the extra DR will not even be enough to counter the +5% weapon damage from ascended weapons. I’m still torn by this, I don’t want power creep and I don’t want to feel forced to get them, but for how expensive they are they don’t really give a good reward. Then again, if I had to choose I’d rather have the latter.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Mystic.5934:

I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic -> ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.

Yep (don’t know if that number is right though), it’s closer to ~13-15% increase in direct damage. Technically all of the stats are getting the same increase, and then theres the extra 5% weapon strength.

The problem is with how well power/precision/crit damage all stack compared to how pretty much every other stat is stand alone (minus some “on crit” effects/sigils/runes).

A similar thing will happen when ascend armor hits, if I recall, the extra DR will not even be enough to counter the +5% weapon damage from ascended weapons. I’m still torn by this, I don’t want power creep and I don’t want to feel forced to get them, but for how expensive they are they don’t really give a good reward. Then again, if I had to choose I’d rather have the latter.

Please examine my math above. The 5% increased weapon damage doesn’t translate into an increase in the damage calculation much beyond 5%, as the power (the stat) increase is negligible in the final calculation. The extra 5% is never multiplied with itself, thus, it is simply a flat multiplier in damage output that is equivalent to a sigil of force.

The ascended armor will benefit from an increase is its armor rating, as well as vitality and toughness, if you chose to craft those stats. And you can do the math for the increases in all your current stats pretty easy, it is easy to see the difference in a damage by simply plugging in the numbers.

Gnat.9405:

If you don’t do high level fractals there is really no reason to strain for ascended. And even then you can live without it, people have been doing so. It’s an illusion of progression that is conveniently a MASSIVE gold sink.

Viva EXOTICS!

lunyboy.8672:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Mystic.5934:

I feel like a lot of people are missing OP’s point:
exotic -> ascended shows 5% increase in direct damage, but only 0.2% increase in condition damage.
this is before you take into account any max amount of condition stacks.

Yep (don’t know if that number is right though), it’s closer to ~13-15% increase in direct damage. Technically all of the stats are getting the same increase, and then theres the extra 5% weapon strength.

The problem is with how well power/precision/crit damage all stack compared to how pretty much every other stat is stand alone (minus some “on crit” effects/sigils/runes).

A similar thing will happen when ascend armor hits, if I recall, the extra DR will not even be enough to counter the +5% weapon damage from ascended weapons. I’m still torn by this, I don’t want power creep and I don’t want to feel forced to get them, but for how expensive they are they don’t really give a good reward. Then again, if I had to choose I’d rather have the latter.

Please examine my math above. The 5% increased weapon damage doesn’t translate into an increase in the damage calculation much beyond 5%, as the power (the stat) increase is negligible in the final calculation. The extra 5% is never multiplied with itself, thus, it is simply a flat multiplier in damage output that is equivalent to a sigil of force.

Sure if you just factor in the +5% weapon damage you are just going to end up with a +5% total damage. You are forgetting two things, one the extra stats that the ascended weapon gives.

For example, comparing an exotic Zerker gs to an ascended Zerker gs: you gain 9 power, 5 precision, and 1% crit damage. When you factor this into the damage calculation:

(Just weapon damage)
[[((1000*2000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5)]]/[[((10502000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.50)*(0.75+0.5)]] = 0.952

(Weapon damage and extra stats)
[[((1000*2000*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5)]]/[[((10502009*1)/2600)1.1][(1+0.5025)*(0.76+0.5)]] = 0.939

So, that alone gives you a ~+7% increase.

My ~13-15% estimate (and I think up to 20% in my calculations, and that would be higher if ascended armor has a higher +crit dam% than exotic) numbers were comparing Full Exotic vs. Full Ascended (including trinkets and armor) with almost all of the extra buffs (food, nourishment, infusions, etc.); sadly I forgot to factor the +250 from the “stacks on kill” sigils, and I didn’t bother with any rune effects. Those extra stats are how the direct damage spike gets higher. I calculated full zerker, full solder, full knight, and full rabid (for direct damage only) if I recall. I’ll look for the post to that math for you. So that’s how the direct damage can get higher.

I’ve never tried to do a condition dps calculation because they have extra stipulations (start up time on getting conditions, condition spike moves, the average number of conditions you can keep, which conditions can you keep up, etc.). So, despite the fact that I use tanks/rabid gear I don’t think it’s worth my time to do all that extra math.

Even though condi users do get the +5% damage from weapon damage, if they have a mix of gear (any power, precision, crit dam stuff) they will see a bigger increase percent-wise from going from exotic to ascended. But still going from ~400 damage per AA to ~420 damage per AA isn’t that great compared to a zerker going from ~2k dam per AA to 2.1k (5%) or 2.4k (20%) dam per AA. The extra +condi damage stat wise just doesn’t make up that (80-380 damage).

The ascended armor will benefit from an increase is its armor rating, as well as vitality and toughness, if you chose to craft those stats. And you can do the math for the increases in all your current stats pretty easy, it is easy to see the difference in a damage by simply plugging in the numbers.

I did that calculation as well. I think I only looked at full knights heavy gear going from exotic to ascended. I had to extrapolate (guess) the armor values, but even when I was being generous the increase to damage reduction was minimal (and the stat upgrades are minimal, roughly +~20 to the main stat if you have all 6 ascended vs. exotic). Something like ~54% DR to 55-56% DR. So that doesn’t really counter the extra damage.

Edit: Also it may help to use the “average damage” formula instead of just using the crit damage. Though in your case of +5% damage from just the weapon strength it doesn’t matter.

I compared 12 different things. Full ascended, Ascended w/ exotic armor, Full Exotic, Full Rare stat/damage totals each with four different types of armor full zerker, full knights, full soldiers, full dire.

If you care to look, here’s the start of my novel (all numbers and calculations included):

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Stats-up-5-condition-damage/first#post3152793

If you don’t want to read that much here’s the “results” post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Stats-up-5-condition-damage/first#post3152807

Oh, and here’s the direct link for the DR calculations:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ascended-Gear-Stats-up-5-condition-damage/page/2#post3155929

I don’t know if anyone checked my math (and I don’t blame them) but direct damage can see the increase. If you look at just the stats (which you need to if you want to look a condi specs) going off the top of my head (I think the exact number is somewhere in one of my posts) the difference in the main stat between full exotic and full ascended is ~200-300. By bleeds that is only 10-15 damage/bleed tic. Noticeable yes, but I don’t think that measures up to the ~20% damage you can do via zerker gear.

Conditions will always get the short end of the stick. As long as conditions limitations are shared it will always be 2nd class dps in anets mind.

If your an achievement hunter, a collector, or you happen to like the look of the skins, craft ascended gear.

If you could care less about any of the above and stats are your thing; the bang for the buck really isn’t there with crafting ascended. If they did make ascended have considerably better stats, we’d be working with a gear treadmill which I think many people are against.

I decided to hit 500 crafting (and craft a longbow) because I happen to like the longbow skin better than the one I have now.

The increase in direct damage is also mitigated by Armor values of the target. If you did 200 damage to a target without any armor/toughness and dealth 120 damage to someone with enough armor for 40% reduction (I think this is easily achievable) then when your power/critD increase by 20% you will do 240 damage to a target with no armor (40 points of damage increase) and 144 damage to someone with 40% reduction (24 points). Those are just randomly thrown out numbers, but most people who use buildcraft look at the potential damage only and don’t compare it to targets armor. The higher the targets armor the more of that damage would be mitigated.

In condition damage case, their armor/toughness makes no difference. Vit/HP goes into helping you vs both types of damage so it’s not a factor.

In PvE the direct damage still remains king, but in WvW/PvP condition builds also benefit from one other thing, the fact that it only relies on Condition Damage for damage, where Direct Damage requires you to boost 3 stats, you sacrafice all of your defense to get to the theoretic top damage, while condition builds will benefit even more from CVT armor/builds.

If you say that not all people will use CVT, then their direct damage would also increase if they use CPP gear, so you would also have to factor in how much damage they do on their regular attacks+their conditions.

Hum. Sounds to me like they priced these about right. Low enough to have the min/makers readily chase them, but high enough that exotic wont go out of style overnight.

Tho… If one item yields a 5% increase… What would a full set do?

Keiel.7489:

The increase in direct damage is also mitigated by Armor values of the target. If you did 200 damage to a target without any armor/toughness and dealth 120 damage to someone with enough armor for 40% reduction (I think this is easily achievable) then when your power/critD increase by 20% you will do 240 damage to a target with no armor (40 points of damage increase) and 144 damage to someone with 40% reduction (24 points). Those are just randomly thrown out numbers, but most people who use buildcraft look at the potential damage only and don’t compare it to targets armor. The higher the targets armor the more of that damage would be mitigated.

Percent damage increase would still stay the same.

And yes, currently ascended gear favours direct dps builds the most, with bunkers far second and condition damage almost completely ignored. This increases the already existing problems inherent to the combat system even more.

Yamagawa.5941:

Tho… If one item yields a 5% increase… What would a full set do?

About 20% damage increase and 2% more damage reduction for pure zerkers, with more tanky builds getting about 7-10% offense increase and 3-5% better on defense.

Yamagawa.5941:

Hum. Sounds to me like they priced these about right. Low enough to have the min/makers readily chase them, but high enough that exotic wont go out of style overnight.

Tho… If one item yields a 5% increase… What would a full set do?

You can look at the links I posted above to see some calculations for zerker, soldiers, knights, and dire (looking at direct damage only). But I figure Astralporing did their own calcs, looked at mine, or is just taking what I said at face value.

If you’re stats matter more (a tank, healer, condi dam, etc.) user than you can for the most part, safely ignore ascended weapons (or work at a slow pace towards them). Most of the stat boosts (over exotic) are on the trinkets. If you are a direct damage/crit/precision user you may want to put some good focus on the ascended weapon.

In either case, ascended armor will not be adding much to your stat totals or defense (should add more for a zerker who can use the extra armor)