Just a couple of facts for people intending to go for legendary armor:
- The entirety of the first raid wing gives us about 33% progression towards “Envoy Armor I: Experimental Armor”
- This means we’ll likely need all 3 wings of the first raid to complete “Envoy Armor I: Experimental Armor”
- Precursor collections have 3 tiers (see point 1)
- This means we need two more full raids to complete our precursor armor (or 6 wings)
- Excluding the wing that’s already out, that means we need 8 more raid wings for precursor armor
- ArenaNet has said they can push out about 6 raid wings a year or one raid wing every 2 months (give or take)
Now for the fun stuff. Mathematically (1 raid wing every 2 months + 8 wings needed = 16 months from now), this means we’re looking at March of 2017 optimistically for the complete set of precursor armor. Note that this still doesn’t account for the process of making the actual legendary armor which will likely either be a P.I.T.A., a giant gold sink, or (like Ad Infinitum) unavailable for an indeterminate amount of time following March of 2017.
Furthermore, this means you have to smash face against not just 3 raid bosses for this wing or 9 raid bosses for the first raid but 27 raid bosses in total from 3 different raids and 9 different wings for the precursor armor. Additionally, if the collections are similar to this first one, you’ll need to do more than just beat the bosses too. It’s entirely likely that you’ll need to clear each one at least two times (see coagulated ectoplasm) for a grand total of 54+ (see point 2) raid boss kills.
There comes a point where you have to ask yourself if the effort is worth it. For me personally, it’s not. I like my current skins and I already have a couple sets of full ascended for each of my toons. If after reading this you still feel the need to get legendary armor, go nuts. I just figured I’d point this out to the people who were on the line.
Point 1: If you believe that the “Envoy Armor I: Experimental Armor” is the precursor, then I must ask why it’s “experimental” like all the other first tier precursors and follow it up with why there’s a “I” (one) in the collection if it’s the only one.
Point 2: I base this on the fact that not only do you have to unlock the collection, but you have to kill the boss a second time to actually get items for the required collection and there’s also probably going to be a “collect X things from the raid” in each one which will require multiple chest loots > e.g. multiple kills of bosses.
tldr; you’ll need to kill 54+ raid bosses to get legendary armor. And the soonest you can possibly even do this will be March of 2017.
EDIT: Added note, while this may unlock the skins for all three weights of armor, you will still only get one set of legendary armor for one specific weight. If you’re an alt-o-holic, you’re S.O.L.