Guild Wars 2

Using 2 + X Agony Resistance to get 1 +(X + 1) Agony resistance is a real trouble if you take the math.

So I don’t know the plans. I don’t know if you want to drop + 2 – + 3 Agony Infusion in the future. For this, let’s assume that you don’t.

To play level 50 with 70 AR (which is the estimated no-damage threshold), you need therefore 30 (from normal trinkets) + 10 (from weapons) + 30 (3 x +10 Agony Infusion).

Currently, to make a +10 Agony Infusion, you need 512(!) + 1 Agony Infusion, and roughly 7.5 gold. Gold is marginal, tbh, given the price of the Agony Infusion on the TP. So… 512 + 1 Agony Infusion, that is something like 128 runs in fractals! This formula is something like 2^(N-1).

So seriously, that means two things. The first is that you expect players to play a few fractals and sell their + 1 AR on the TP. The second it means that if people don’t want to buy, and assuming they’re playing 2 fractal runs a day (41 + and 31 +), a player can get one + 10 agony in 64 days. But to get to 70 total, we need 3 + 10 Agony Infusion, that means playing for 192 days! And that is… without counting the + X Agony Infusion you create in between.

So now we’ve proved it’s a grind, let’s be pragmatic and suggest transformation to your awful recipes.

A simple change is all we need: we split the recipes in two:

1. A + 2 Agony Infusion requires 2 + 1 Agony Infusion.
2. A + N Agony Infusion requires 1 + (N-1) Agony Infusion and 1 + (N-2) Agony Infusion.

The number of + 1 AI required for a + N AI is: phi^(N + 1) / sqrt(5), rounded to the nearest number.

Yes, this is the Fibonacci sequence, slightly adapted (initial values).
With this for a + 10 Agony Infusion, you only need 89 + 1 Agony Infusion, which is roughly equivalent to 67 runs for a full set of 3 + 10 Agony Infusion. 67 runs is already a lot (more than 1 month if you play 2 runs a day). Especially if you wanna play with your alts.

So yes please, reconsider the formula. The sooner the better. Check the table below to see how the two formulas compare.

+N  Current  Fibonacci
 1                
 2      2         2
 3      4         3
 4      8         5
 5     16         8
 6     32        13
 7     64        21
 8    128        34
 9    256        55
10    512        89

I probably wouldn’t make that change if I were ArenaNet because of the people that would cry that they lost a lot of money under the previous rule and want their money back. But, the way it is, it is very unfriendly if it takes 400+ hours to max agony (70) in one character, just considering the agony infusion runs.
I imagine the best way to gradually make it more friendly is to drop +2, +3 and +4 infusions depending on the fractal level.
I would start dropping +2 on level 50.
The following week I would put +2 to drop in 40-49 and +3 in 50.
…And continue bringing it down, until:
+1 dropped in 10-19 fractals
+2 in 20-29 fractals
+3 in 30-39 fractals
This way, people could prepare themselves for the change and the agony resist reward would be adequate for the difficulty level.

In short, No. This isn’t a CoD game or WoW. Stop asking them to pander to the lowest common denominator.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

In short, No. This isn’t a CoD game or WoW. Stop asking them to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Those are very weak arguments (or no arguments, just weak comparisions and an order). I guess you really consider that players really should spend upwards of 400 hours just to max agony resist in one character. Also, the imperative you used is simply bad communication, but I will try too:

Stop thinking that the game is just for hardcore players with no life and 24 hours to play.

Even the 2-runs a day the OP suggested seemed a little too hardcore for me.
I would like to believe a character-specific trait (like agony resistance) should take no more than 100 hours to max on a character, because you might have to do it again in other characters.
In account-specific long term traits (like Money, Karma, WXP and Luck) it really should be a “sky is the limit approach” to avoid people maxing it in one month, but when the trait is character bound, that is bad because discourages the use of alts and enjoying all the variety the game has.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

In short, No. This isn’t a CoD game or WoW. Stop asking them to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Could you elaborate? I don’t understand the references, having never played to the mentioned games.

Making it easier to get is a kinda weak argument.^^

If you start at lvl 30 and you want to go to lvl 50, you have to do at least 20 × 4 fractals – means: you definately have 80 +1 Infusions. Usually you get at least one, but you can get even more – yesterday a guildmate got 8 out of 1 complete run (4 fractals).

Ok, if you start at 0, you get up to 200, but this doesn’t make it “easier to achieve” at all.

If you want to go from 30 to 50, you need at least to play 20 hours – a good group usually needs that much time or a lil’ less.

Means: If you want to get 1 (!) lvl 10 AR Infusion, you have to play at least 130 hours! (512 fractals, round about 15 min per fractal). But: for lvl 50 you need even more AR, so you have to play more.^^

Well a couple of things:

1) We can assume when ascended armor hits this won’t make much of a difference (in the short term) because we’ll have another +30 AR

2) ~30 days of grind is not much difference for getting an ascended trinket with laurels. Even the accessories take a couple of weeks each if you have a big enough guild to use commendations, or the time to get the BoH from WvW (assuming you don’t already have a stockpile of them).

3) Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind it taking less to upgrade the infusions, but it seems their intent was for people who already grind higher level fractals. “Average” person X won’t need the AR to do a lvl 40-50 fractal. People who already grind fractals have a new source of income (from selling them on the tp) and can also save up to be able to do the next batch of levels when they are released.

Personally, I’d like to see two things.

Let us remove the infusions (preferably for free, crafting them up is already enough of a gold sink) so we and upgrade them and don’t have to keep hoarding them forever.

In the future don’t make Agony in intervals of 5. With the way it is now we have at most 3 slots to work with and they have to add up to a multiple of 5 to not be wasteful. And if you only have the infused rings to work with you’re pretty limited with what options you infuse them with.

I mean if it takes ~1 month to get a +10 infusion. It will take ~2 months to get a +11, but that infusion is pointless. It’s faster to just make 2 +10s than a +11 and a +9. It will take ~3 months to get 3 +10s, but to go up a tier in AR. We would need 2 +12s (~8 months) and a +11 (~2 months). So, to go from +30 to +35 from infusions will take an additional 7 months (also assuming you never used those first +10s).

To Wallace MacBix

1) We can’t assume that. In the codes datamined for the ascended armor we don’t see any infusion slot on them, only a upgrade slot like on exotic armor (for runes). Of course its only a preview that players were not suppose to see and it could be changed by the time ascended armor will be available. But still we can’t assume that we gonna have a easy +30 AR in the future.

2) Its not 30 days per +10. Its 2 months per +10 and only if you do 2 fractal per days each days. This mean that to get 70 AR you will need to do 2 fractal per day for more that 6 months or buy AR on the TP. I’m a hardcore player and I have a hard time to do 2 fractal per day. This is a stupid grind. Especially if you can’t reused your AR that you already had put in your equipment.