Guild Wars 2

Note: This only applies to the ascended back items; I know there are ascended rings you can earn as daily rewards for beating t2 and t3! (And I think that’s great, though the RNG has been very unfriendly to me for a few days)

This is an underpinning flaw in their design of ascended items. They (ascended items) use the same materials that you use for your legendary items, which means that to progress toward ascended items requires you forgo work on your legendary. They are mutually exclusive at the same time and require separate efforts to obtain.

The real bottlenecks here are the ecto and the t6 materials. It would’ve been a much better middle-ground if the requirements were different, and you could work toward both at the same time. So, for instance, if instead of ectoplasm it required Gifts of Ascension from the FotM dungeon. Still a significant effort, yet something you could work toward alongside your legendary progress. This is just an example, and I could think of any dozen others as a substitute. The point is made, however; these two progression tracks should not be mutually exclusive, and this creates a real problem as it is.

ANet has said that they want to add new ways to acquire these ascended items in the future, and I look forward to that, but I hope that this feedback will maybe reach its way into a design discussion so that they do not make these future methods of acquisition mutually exclusive with progression towards one’s legendary item.

Thanks for reading.

erm… same here. I heard you need the ascended stuff to progress further in fotm. So, I’m gonna step away a bit from the fotm or maybe do until level 5 only until I finish my legendary. :P

Yeah, when I realized that getting ascended items was going to cut into what I’ve gathered so far for my legendary weapon, I gave up on Ascended items all together. I don’t need to do hard mode fractals, and exotic gear is perfectly adequate everywhere else. And when it comes to WvW I’ll just hide in the zerg.

Completely and utterly agree with OP. They should require different ingredients…few people are going to sacrifice their stash of ectos they are saving for a legendary for an ascended

legendary all the wayD
doing it for looks anyways. and i like my mad memories backpiece.
i’ll keep doing the fractals for fun but all mats are saved for my legendary. i didn’t even eally look into what it costs to craft ascended items yet.. that’s pretty ridiculous. at the same time, ANet did mention that ascended = legendary status in terms of rarity at least… so understandable to a certain extent?

imagine when they release the full set of ascended gear.

I agree as well. I’m going really slow for my legendary as I can’t play that much nowadays, but my main focus is on it at the moment and all my mats and gold go towards it!

Same here. I’ll just play the new dungeon until you need Infused items, then I’ll stop. I don’t wanna waste my gold for ascended, when I could just progress towards a legendary instead.

The exact reason because this tier exists: to helps who doesn’t own a precursor to focus on something “legendary” to work on. Obiouvsly if you was working on your legendary yet, keep going on that task until done.

That’s the thing, Lucas; that is the attitude that is wrong. Ascended items are supposed to bridge the gap, not be a fork in the road. We should be able to progress toward Ascended items while we progress toward Legendary weapons, not be forced to pick and choose. This is the ideal that I think ANet should look at in terms of Mystic Forge recipe design for Ascended items.

I think it’s not so much as brdging the gap, but providing other players who don’t want a legendary or those insane 350 charged core mjolnir weapons a way to “grind”, so to speak. Clearly, getting a legendary is harder than the ascended stuff. But it’s even harder to get both items, so people gotta focus on what they wanna spend on.

This is kind of a problem isn’t it!

i haven’t done much reasearch yet on ascended items as i am rather impratial to them still at the moment.. based on my understanding these rings are drops, as well as the materials needed for them yes? though there are things that overlap such as T6 mats, or ectoplasm.. so i can see how you’re in a sense, made to choose one or the other.. because stacks of any of the listed items above aren’t easy to come by.

at the same time, they DID add obsy shards to the FotM vendor.. so for those are don’t want to be in Orr anymore have another alternative.. or, simply because the Balthazar event is still bugged 99.9% of the time.

Overall Legendaries use so much of everything that you can only focus on it first before you make other mystic forge items. The 500 globs is a real killer to me since the price of them have increased by 10silver since the bot ban. Globs of ectoplasm are used for every other mystic forge item I want to make but the triforge. by the time I get done with my cheap legendary (I do not like to farm alot) I will have the triforge mats as well.

There is actually a far cheaper method of getting an ascended backpiece. Basically, 1x Prototype Capacitor + Gift of Ascension + Vials of Mist + Crystals/Philosopher Stones = Ascended Prototype Capacitor.

Yes, this requires a bit of grinding for fractal shards (1350 + 500), but no T6 mats, no Ecto required.

Original thread http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75677-1350-token-fractal-backpiece-forge-recipe, credits to Goldenrice for finding this.

True, but we still need the non-t6mats formula for the upgrade too

Yeah I expected someone to find a recipe for an ascended item from fractal runs only. Thanks for the link. My play style is such that I tend to do maybe 10 dungeons a month or so. Love WvW and exploring to much. Another long term goal for me.

That’s really cool that there’s a non-gold way of obtaining the ascended back items! Cheers for the link. Guess I won’t have to buy those overpriced t6 materials after all.

I too really wish they’d stop requiring the same mats for every bloody crafting recipe in this game.

And it’s always 250 too..