I do not really get, how you obtaion ascended weapons and I am not really interested in it at this point, but some things i really have to say.
I am actually not interested in crafting, I do not like it. I know, the amounts of mats needed for ascended weapons is a lot higher than normal, but i realized a few things I really dislike:
Ascended trinkets can be only obtained with laurels (really easy, but takes much time) and with fractal-coins (which is a lot harder compared to laurels, furthermore I do not play fractals, no fun for me). There should be more ways to get these, I do not understand, why you did not add a way to craft them like you craft weapons.
Ascended weapons are accountbound. Many mats are only obtainable in some special situation. I hope, there will be easier or at least other ways to get them. I know, you cannot make it to easy, only because some players plan to get them 8 times, for each profession, but still, dont make it too hard, there are legendaries as the ultimate goal, not ascended weapons. Furthermore even the mats are accountbound… I make dungeons a lot, but i get mats i cannot use yet and also cannot sell them… You know, one stack ist only 250, what shall I do with all of them…
Differences between gametypes are soo annoying: There are WvW-infusions and Fractalinfusions, you have to decide between and at least without fractalinfusion in higher fractals, you will get problems.
What i would like to see would be something like this:
- Ascended crafting, the mats should be sellable to make them not useless for non-crafter and to give a possibility to get them for others (you may have no luck with getting, what you need or you dislike a way to get a certain mat). There could be different sets, account bound (to show off) and sellable with boring/not unique skin.
- Loot, but no direct weapons. This loot is needed to upgrade certain exotic weapons (like illusion weapons). If new weapons are added, these are first created as exotics.
- Fractals, but only a way to upgrade the fractals weapons together with the mystic forge.
- Dungeons. These are the easiest way to obtain ascended gear. For weapons, you need a gift, the weapon (like ac GS and a gift of Ascalon), 100 Philosophers stone and a buyable item (from NPC, around 20g?), that decides the stats (can be replaced by mystic forge stones, if the stats remain the ones of the exotic weapon). For trinkets, you use instead of the gift offers, the exotic trinket itself has to be crafted with the offer before.
Yeah, this may is a bit easy, but you should not work hard for this items in my eyes, hard work should be a need for legendaries. Furthermore, exotic infusions (usable from level 60 to fit to the other max upgrades) could be a real hard deal: They are not too much better compared to infusions, but to perfect the weapon, you need them (also on legendaries), also some especially expensive infusions could add graphi effects.