Now the real problem is that we dont really know how much infusion we need. We dont know how many regular infusions we will have once we have full ascended gear sets. Nor do we know how much resistance we will need once all fractal levels are unlocked.
Hence those that wish to prepare now are likely to waste a lot of time and money.
And as I remember the policy of GW2 was “not to wait to have fun but just get in and have fun.” Now that policy has been broken many times but this time it is broken to a whole new level as we dont even know how far we have to climb the ladder for full resistance. If the infusions had at least a cap like +10 there would be no problem but they supposedly have no cap so we can expect anything. But now even if we have a +10 infusion on our hands we have a choice to increase it more or use it.
And we dont know if we need +10 or +15 or maybe if just +5 is enough.
We had to pay 250 ecto already to get that special slot in the back items but now it turns out it was a warm up to the thing that follows.
And even worse will come for players that will want these infusions on more than 1 character. 3 characters with 3 +10 infusions would require 4608 +1 infusions.
There are several ways to fix it like make higher level infusions drop or have the +1 infusions drop in greater quantity. But even so the requirement is too high and leaving a fractal level with over 100 +1 infusions sounds stupid. Also making +10 infusions drop naturally would make the whole thing pointless.
So I propose to change the mathematical formula. Right not its using exponential growth. Which I mentioned in a different post is 2^(X – 1) where X is the amount of agony resistance. Which means a +5 requires 16 +1 infusions to make, +10 requires 512, +15 requires 16384 and so on. Now this is simply going overboard which is why I propose to use the 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ….. divergent series formula which is X(X + 1)/2
Which means that to make a + 5 infusion the required number of +1 infusions would be:
5(5 + 1)/2 = 15 Which isnt far from the current requirement however for a +10 infusion there would be a big difference: 10(10 + 1)/2 = 55 and as for +15 it would be 15(15 + 1)/2 = 120.
Now how would this work – to make a +2 infusion a player would need to mix 3 +1 infusions and 2 thermocatalytic reagents. Next for a +3 infusion the player would have to mix the +2 infusion with 3 +1 infusions and 3 thermocatalytic reagents.
For a +4 mix a +3 with 4 +1 and 4 reagents. For a +10 mix a +9 with 10 +1 and 10 reagents. So yes for ballance the number of reagents should grow too and the formula for them would be similar: (X(X + 1)/2)-1 as a result a +5 infusion would require a total of 14 reagents while a +10 would need 54 etc.
This also means that there would be a solid cap for the infusion which would be 250 as the +250 infusion would require a +249 infusion, 250 +1 infusions and 250 reagents and one cannot add more than 250 of same ingredient in a recipe.
However the total would be 31375 + infusions and 31374 reagents to make it so it would still be a job for a maniac.
I cant think of a more ballanced solution as players that will make +10 infusions wont have such a hard choice at putting them into the slots nor wont be so angry if they have to be replaced in the future with +15 or turn out to be useless in the end.