Guild Wars 2

Why does this exist? We’ve been told that our AR will not go down (ie: if you have 25 ar, you’ll still have it after the patch). I have 25 ar. I could easily get another 20 ar with versatile infusions, and infusing my other ring. So that’s 45 ar. That’s enough to get me up to level 39 with 1% agony damage. I only need another 15 to get to 49 with 1%. But, and this is the point: people who do level 48 fractals is a vanishingly small amount of players. So why introduce a new mechanic that the vast majority of players don’t care about? Is it because we’re getting a new kind of AR for the bosses? Or has AR been redone, and now you’ll need more?

It’s likely for several reasons.

1. That way, you can try to keep your AR in dedicated slots, and use the normal infusion slots for other things (stat infusions, utility ones, devs also hinted that there will be even more choice of later on)

2. It lets devs get easily from having to prepare infused versions of all other ascended gear beyond rings and backpacks. We already know that Anet thinks that doing complicated workarounds is preferable than having to fix small things or admit they forgot about something.

3. It introduces a lot of grind for people to do – if no new fractal levels will be introduced it will be a meaningless grind, but a lot of peope will do it anyway just in case. And since that grind also eats Thermocatalytic reagents, it also doubles up as a gold sink.

In short, pure win.