Guild Wars 2

I’m not worried about progression with the new Ascended gear. What I’m worried about is currently, from the information I have found, there appears to be mutually exclusive slots on gear. I main a Warrior, and I use the hell out of my runes of the soldier. The example of the Ascended gear was a ring (only has a slot for non-rune upgrades), so that isn’t a problem yet, but if we eventually have a full set of Ascended gear, will there be a normal upgrade slot in addition to the infusion slot? If not, then I would have to choose between slotting for Agony and using my (extremely useful) runes of the soldier. Being a shout heal Warrior, the loss of my runes would basically kill my build, as it sounds like I would have to slot for Agony if I wanted to move as far as I can in the new dungeon.

According to the latest article, Ascended gear has “rune-like” bonuses built-in, so you’d look for a piece of Solder-tuned Ascended gear, and add an infusion to it.

Hopefully they have the soldier rune set as Ascended gear. Another problem I have had, is most of the dungeon armor I’ve found don’t tend to have healing on it. I have alleviated any issues by making my own exotic gear and transmuting it onto the cool looking armor. I just fear the alignment of stars required for me to get healing stats and the rune-like soldier passives on a piece of Ascended gear will be too much…

It will be I’d bet, they feel that players got legendary equipment too early, I won’t be surprised if they made us grind the fractals for them.. Then eventually add in diminishing returns…

I’m more interested in the fact that the ascended gear already posted is better than the exotic it is replacing.

that would make ascended weapons potentially statistically better than legendaries.

Maimakterion.5940:

I’m more interested in the fact that the ascended gear already posted is better than the exotic it is replacing.

that would make ascended weapons potentially statistically better than legendaries.

They’re boosting the legendary stats up to make up for that. Legendary stats will always be on par with the highest gear, no matter what other tiers are added.

All ascended gear makes me worry about the future of Guild Wars 2, the items what has been linked in map chat stat wise have all been massively superior to exotic gear, meaning we could be witnessing the end of casual guild wars 2 as we know it.

The reasons; exotic gear right now is somewhat easy to acquire, thus keeping playing field pretty much even especially in W3 – if ascended gear will be like other MMos where only the top 5% of players will likely acquire it, then W3 balance could alter very dramatically and could even start a mass exodus of casual players, leaving servers with even more problems.

*Also, Legendary items are hard to get for the average player. At the moment, most if not all the people currently carrying around Legendary weapons have all had alot of help and/or exploited/botted/credit card the way to them. Trust me, they are not that easy to get.

My concern with ascended gear is that it is an upgrade from exotic.

At the moment it appears that the new PVE will be the way to get them, so as a WvW player I will be forced to PVE if I want to remain competitive.

This of course could be that I worry for nothing as they surely have a plan to give WvW players a WvW upgrade path as well… they do don’t they? Failing to do that would be showing contempt for those of us who would rather shoot themselves in the foot than be forced to go through dungeons.

You can craft them, so it’s very likely that it could go something like:

Ascended Precursor + Gift of Ascension + Rune + Infusion

They’re fairly lazy and unoriginal so I feel confident in saying they’ll probably just copy over the existing runes. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

Yeah, but the cost to craft them could be pretty ridiculous. After all, gold isn’t that easy to acquire – its not like the average player can farm up 100g a week.

Basically, unless these ascended items are acquired much in the same way current dungeon exotics are farmed with tokens, then it’ll fail and the entire game will suffer.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Yeah, but the cost to craft them could be pretty ridiculous. After all, gold isn’t that easy to acquire – its not like the average player can farm up 100g a week.

Basically, unless these ascended items are acquired much in the same way current dungeon exotics are farmed with tokens, then it’ll fail and the entire game will suffer.

One way of acquiring them is upgrading an “Ascended Precursor” (exotic) via the Mystic Forge, using a Gift of Ascension which can be purchased using the tokens to get in the Fractal dungeon for 500 tokens.

If you can get any exotic and use it as a precursor, then the cost shouldn’t be that bad, unless the MF recipe is Gift of Ascension + Ascended Precursor + 250 Ori Blades + 250 Ori hilts.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

All ascended gear makes me worry about the future of Guild Wars 2, the items what has been linked in map chat stat wise have all been massively superior to exotic gear, meaning we could be witnessing the end of casual guild wars 2 as we know it.

The reasons; exotic gear right now is somewhat easy to acquire, thus keeping playing field pretty much even especially in W3 – if ascended gear will be like other MMos where only the top 5% of players will likely acquire it, then W3 balance could alter very dramatically and could even start a mass exodus of casual players, leaving servers with even more problems.

*Also, Legendary items are hard to get for the average player. At the moment, most if not all the people currently carrying around Legendary weapons have all had alot of help and/or exploited/botted/credit card the way to them. Trust me, they are not that easy to get.

I’m fairly certain when you link an item it doesn’t have the upgrade slot slotted. The increase in stats per item is 8% which is far less than the increase you get from going from Rare to Exotic. Since you can easily be competitive in WvW using Masterwork quality gear there is really no need to worry about anything. Fully decked out will give you a 5% bonus in overall effectiveness, and and that is really pushing it. If that extremely small increase in stats leads to you getting owned then you’re playing very badly.

Artorous.8573:

I’m fairly certain when you link an item it doesn’t have the upgrade slot slotted.

Look again, it has. The upgrade is part of the base stats. And the difference is 8% for minor stats, but over 40% for the major one (which in example we were shown is MF).

Yeah, Astral has it right ~ and I bet you guys haven’t even seen some of the gear people have been linking in map chats – some of it is atrociously overpowered compared to current exotic gear.

Honestly if anyone was to acquire the top level of Ascended vs exotic gear..the exotic wouldn’t even remotely stand a chance, so basically the entire balance of the game very much hinges on how easy it is to acquire ascended gear. Personally for me, if this level of gear becomes a massive grindfest to acquire, such as gold farming etc ~ Then I’ll seriously be looking elsewhere for my MMo fix because, we all know…the people with the most bots farming, will get the most gear.

However, if getting ascended gear is purely, and I mean purely based on completing fractal paths and going ever deeper instead of farming, then this could be a good thing – right now, this could go either way.

We had a chance to compare two berserker rings today.

The ascended ring had +10power, +13prec (iirc couldve been 15) and +2% critdmg over the exotic. Not including the stats/effects gained from the Infusion slot.

Getting all my trinkets upgraded to ascended (assuming the step is just as big for amulet, usually its a bit bigger) im looking at atleast +60power, + 78prec, +12% critdmg. And ofcourse 5 infusion slots, so far we’ve seen only a weak infusion but even that should be good for +30stats of my choosing.

Let me remind you again, that is just from my 6 trinket slots. We’ve also compared a rare berserker ring to the exotic. And the step from rare -> exotic is argueably just as big as exotic -> Ascended is.
Something along the lines of +15power, +18prec, +1% critdmg. Overall i feel that weights about the same as +10power/13prec/2%critdmg that we got from exotic->ascended. And again, not including the infusion slot.

WvW is going to be a blast now that glasscannons can be running around with extra, ow just ballparking here, 25% more critdmg. Once gear and weapons are introduced.