Guild Wars 2

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

I beg to differ. I figured I would run fractal 49s for a bit until I got at least 2 or 3 ascended chest drops and then craft the rest of the armor. After 2 weeks of 49 and 40 daily, I have still yet to get a single chest drop. That’s not including the 2/3 weeks of doing 31-39 daily without getting an ascended chest drop.

Very unlucky, or quick question, has your personal level been at 41+ that whole time?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard.

Got ~8 useless gloves chests from fractals, some shoulders and shoes chests. Dropped leg chest only once. After 7 months regular fractal running. Good luck. We need more gloves!
Asc gear is only about grinding.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

I beg to differ. I figured I would run fractal 49s for a bit until I got at least 2 or 3 ascended chest drops and then craft the rest of the armor. After 2 weeks of 49 and 40 daily, I have still yet to get a single chest drop. That’s not including the 2/3 weeks of doing 31-39 daily without getting an ascended chest drop.

Fractal RNG has been an annoyance for a long time, I doubt anyone will argue against that :P

As the balance to your bad luck, I’ve done maybe 5 fractal runs since they changed the drop rates, and I’ve gotten two ascended chests from it. Go figure.

The FotM revamp should alleviate at least some of the RNG problem. I know for sure that the fractal skins will be available for Pristine Relics, and I hope that there’d be some ascended chests from that vendor as well, even if they cost a lot of relics.

Jerus.4350:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

I beg to differ. I figured I would run fractal 49s for a bit until I got at least 2 or 3 ascended chest drops and then craft the rest of the armor. After 2 weeks of 49 and 40 daily, I have still yet to get a single chest drop. That’s not including the 2/3 weeks of doing 31-39 daily without getting an ascended chest drop.

Very unlucky, or quick question, has your personal level been at 41+ that whole time?

Yep. I actually had to run two without getting the reward chest the first day so that the third would have me at level 41+

Well. There is nothing to talk about. Just compare this two builds:
1. Asc armor+trinkets+weapon
2. Exo armor+asc trinkets+asc weapon.
First: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-ThBBABYt/o8DgLAQe6AC4BAUp6PnpEEA-e

Second:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-ThBBwAY3fU+B4CAgT9n86AC8AAOrEEA-e

Tl;dr. You don’t need asc armor to run raids.

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

It’s a little disingenuous to say recommended when there is a hard enrage timer. Full ascended vs full exotics can easily makeup that minute or more. Lower armor means taking more damage and trying to survive rather than putting out full dps. Lower stats and weapon damage obviously means lower damage especially with multipliers. The icing on the cake is that with lower damage adds don’t die as fast and you take more damage, thus leading back to the trying to survive thing.

Let’s not forget that the first boss is a berserker/sinister fight, which is already a slap in the face considering that’s what the community has wanted gone for 2+ years. When the first to clear had to do almost full dps specs with everyone in ascended I don’t really see anything short of full dps specced exotic groups that are top tier players even having a chance. I truly hope that the other boss encounters feature more in-depth balancing as to require more than 1-2 tank/healer specs and the rest full dps to meet an artificial difficulty barrier. That will cause issues in itself though given the first boss is a dps check, so prepare for more outrage when people need to change spec mid-raid and have 3-4 ascended sets to support those specs.

Honestly, ArenaNet needs to be working on a way for players to gear up with multiple ascended sets. If they are going to pull raids from other MMO’s then they need the infrastructure that leads up to it as well. In other MMO’s you do the dungeons/raids in a set order so you can gear up to meet that next challenge. In GW2 there is no way to really gear up for raids besides a huge grind(money or mats), hitting the RNG jackpot, or time gated stuff.

You’re just avoiding saying that ascended is required because you know it will cause outrage. What you need to be asking yourself is why would that be the case and how can ArenaNet as a whole solve that issue. It’s fine if you’re avoiding it now as long as you have a solution later, but if there is no solution the outrage is going to happen. Make ascended more accessible and there won’t be much outrage, but ignore the issue and force people into the current system and it’s not going to be pretty.

Proper rotations and builds equate to much much more than ascended versus exotic. Stop stirring up drama and inciting paranoia.

Besides ascended isnt exactly hard to get now. So you really are just being ridiculous.

Distaste.4801:

snip

So you either have high damage gear and the survival is on your skill, or you have lesser damage gear and part of the survival is put onto your stats instead of all on you/your team.

This seems like you’re in a high jump competition, and you’re asking the judge to lower the bar because you don’t know if you can jump it.

SlyDevil.3952:

This seems like you’re in a high jump competition, and you’re asking the judge to lower the bar because you don’t know if you can jump it.

That would be a skill based check, which this is not. This is more like the case of some of the participants wearing really expensive boots that let them jump higher. And the bar getting intentionally placed at the highest point someone without those boots can actually jump. Just because the judge has a personal interest in selling those expensive boots.
(that ignoring a “minor” fact that raids are not a competition, and that success of some players does not need to be based on failure of others).

You would have a point if gw2 was only about stats. But its not. So you dont.

spoj.9672:

You would have a point if gw2 was only about stats. But its not. So you dont.

No, it is not only about stats, but their importance seems to be getting stronger and stronger lately.

Distaste.4801:

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

It’s a little disingenuous to say recommended when there is a hard enrage timer. Full ascended vs full exotics can easily makeup that minute or more. Lower armor means taking more damage and trying to survive rather than putting out full dps. Lower stats and weapon damage obviously means lower damage especially with multipliers. The icing on the cake is that with lower damage adds don’t die as fast and you take more damage, thus leading back to the trying to survive thing.

Let’s not forget that the first boss is a berserker/sinister fight, which is already a slap in the face considering that’s what the community has wanted gone for 2+ years. When the first to clear had to do almost full dps specs with everyone in ascended I don’t really see anything short of full dps specced exotic groups that are top tier players even having a chance. I truly hope that the other boss encounters feature more in-depth balancing as to require more than 1-2 tank/healer specs and the rest full dps to meet an artificial difficulty barrier. That will cause issues in itself though given the first boss is a dps check, so prepare for more outrage when people need to change spec mid-raid and have 3-4 ascended sets to support those specs.

Honestly, ArenaNet needs to be working on a way for players to gear up with multiple ascended sets. If they are going to pull raids from other MMO’s then they need the infrastructure that leads up to it as well. In other MMO’s you do the dungeons/raids in a set order so you can gear up to meet that next challenge. In GW2 there is no way to really gear up for raids besides a huge grind(money or mats), hitting the RNG jackpot, or time gated stuff.

You’re just avoiding saying that ascended is required because you know it will cause outrage. What you need to be asking yourself is why would that be the case and how can ArenaNet as a whole solve that issue. It’s fine if you’re avoiding it now as long as you have a solution later, but if there is no solution the outrage is going to happen. Make ascended more accessible and there won’t be much outrage, but ignore the issue and force people into the current system and it’s not going to be pretty.

I like how your saying ascended is going to be needed and yet we haven’t seen anyone try a full raid ( cause obviously we don’t have access to that ) with just exotics. The worlds first kill of the first boss had over a minute left on the clock. Not to mention trinkets which are a large part of the extra stats are pretty easy to get.

Astralporing.1957:

spoj.9672:

You would have a point if gw2 was only about stats. But its not. So you dont.

No, it is not only about stats, but their importance seems to be getting stronger and stronger lately.

No its not. Thats just paranoid delusions. Caused by one poorly thought out dev comment that people just blew out of proportions.

Distaste.4801:

Let’s not forget that the first boss is a berserker/sinister fight, which is already a slap in the face considering that’s what the community has wanted gone for 2+ years.

My community didn’t want berserker/sinister gear gone. Raids are about combat, and combat is about damage. If you want damage, you need damage stats. What did you envision the raid being if DPS players didn’t wear DPS gear? Also, the teams that beat it weren’t full zerk/sini specs, so this argument really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

When the first to clear had to do almost full dps specs with everyone in ascended

Well, when there’s a free box of ascended gear handed to you when you join and you’ve only got a few hours to try the content out, you’re not going to wear exotics. Of course the teams that cleared it wore ascended gear.

I don’t really see anything short of full dps specced exotic groups that are top tier players even having a chance.

That’s how it should be. What would be the point of ArenaNet making a big deal out of adding challenging content if low-skill players in subpar gear could clear it without a tremendous challenge?

Honestly, ArenaNet needs to be working on a way for players to gear up with multiple ascended sets.

They went a different route already, it’d make no sense to change now. Support isn’t all that dependent on stats, hence you don’t need multiple sets. Support power comes from trait, skill, and weapon choices. You can wear DPS gear, do ok damage, and still provide awesome support — all without carrying around 6 bags worth of spare gear sets.

It’s actually a really nice system when taken on it’s own. It’s just different from what players expect when they come from other games that do make you carry around extra gear sets to switch roles.

Astralporing.1957:

That would be a skill based check, which this is not. This is more like the case of some of the participants wearing really expensive boots that let them jump higher. And the bar getting intentionally placed at the highest point someone without those boots can actually jump.

No reason to make assumptions here, the math is easy:

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

The fight is 8 minutes long.

10% of 8 minutes is 48 seconds.

The first clear had about 70 seconds remaining. That’s an extra 22 seconds over what they would need if your statement was true.

And that was with relatively unoptimized strats and compositions compared to what we’ll see after launch. Sounds to me like exotics should be fine. Harder, yes, of course. But still quite doable.

Just because the judge has a personal interest in selling those expensive boots.

Are you suggesting that ArenaNet profits over people gearing up in ascendeds? You’ll need to explain that one to me.

(that ignoring a “minor” fact that raids are not a competition, and that success of some players does not need to be based on failure of others).

It doesn’t depend on the failure of others at all.

They’ll only fail if they give up and refuse to improve and learn.

spoj.9672:

Astralporing.1957:

spoj.9672:

You would have a point if gw2 was only about stats. But its not. So you dont.

No, it is not only about stats, but their importance seems to be getting stronger and stronger lately.

No its not. Thats just paranoid delusions. Caused by one poorly thought out dev comment that people just blew out of proportions.

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

Should does not mean you must have, it means that reccomended for most people.
and lo and behold, only the best teams, after 2-3 hours, were able to beat the first raids mini boss before enraging, in full ascended.
Many teams failed even with full ascended, even teams who knew the mechanics failed with only 4-5 dps.

first miniboss. that you ll ever fight in a raid, the best people who tried, with 8-9 zerkers(basically highest dps/lowest defense/recovery stat compisition possible) only had a minute left.

Sounds like the players are falling exactly within her predictions, if not under performing.

in the hardcore players defense, many didnt get to play due to the timing, but seems like yall need to get your skills up if you want to call her statement inaccurate.

Problem I see is that if it’s tuned to exotics then anyone who has ascended will have an easier time. Many of these people are the more hardcore, those who have been yearning for this content for a long time… and it gets cheapened because other people aren’t willing to spend the time to get ascended, which simply isn’t that hard to do.

Alternately you can make the extra stats not count, or at least should (when you delevel the bonus stats don’t scale sub 80 I think it was even ascended is treated as exotics), but that just makes all that investment null, leaving a pretty bad taste in a lot of mouths of people who did spend that time.

In the end those who got ascended would be cheated or at least feel that way if the content was tuned to exotic levels.

Personally I rather have my ascended turned into exotic than for me to get an advantage over the tuning level. And I wouldn’t really mind that but I KNOW many would.

But, ascended really isn’t hard to get, I’m sitting on 3 sets of heavy, 4 sets of medium, 1.5 sets of light and have 65 damask in the bank, ohh and like 2 dozen weapons. I really don’t even play that hardcore and certainly never cared much about gold farming.

I can kinda see the argument for newer players, but players of the caliber that can jump into raids in a month or even 2 are not going to see ascended gear as much of a struggle. And I know if I had any of my top tier friends from old games jump into GW2 I’d be decking them out in ascended right away, and they’d probably be able to pay me back within a week.

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

dlonie.6547:

Also, the teams that beat it weren’t full zerk/sini specs, so this argument really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Yeah, that one player that wasn’t, and was running hybrid condi (or celestial, in second case), definitely makes soo much difference to that argument.

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

That would be a skill based check, which this is not. This is more like the case of some of the participants wearing really expensive boots that let them jump higher. And the bar getting intentionally placed at the highest point someone without those boots can actually jump.

No reason to make assumptions here, the math is easy:

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

dlonie.6547:

The fight is 8 minutes long.

10% of 8 minutes is 48 seconds.

And 15% is 72

dlonie.6547:

The first clear had about 70 seconds remaining. That’s an extra 22 seconds over what they would need if your statement was true.

…or 2 seconds short.

dlonie.6547:

And that was with relatively unoptimized strats and compositions compared to what we’ll see after launch. Sounds to me like exotics should be fine. Harder, yes, of course. But still quite doable.

Doable, as, there will be groups that will manage it from time to time? Yes, definitely. Just not for most players, and not with aboveaverage chances of success. It will still be in the category of “go in exotics, and you will most likely fail”. And i’m sure that for the majority of raiders it will remain as “go in exotics, and you will fail”.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

Once again, I refer to my post:

you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

Once again, I refer to my post:

you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

Once again you miss the point.
Recommended gear is above what is required for a perfect run.
Yes some people will be able to beat the raid in exotics eventually
no, most of the people who beat the raid will not be able to, or desire to.
and they werent designed to.

Regardless, almost all serious attempts at success in raids will expect players to have ascended.

Stop decieving players by leading them to believe wearing exotics will be viewed as viable for the vast majority of raiders. It will not be. I know you like trying to win an argument, but be realistic here. This is not about what is possible, this is about what will be expected from players.

I don’t get the point you’re trying to make. Obviously ascended gear is better than exotic gear, so it makes absolute sense to use ascended gear if you can. Obviously times will be faster with ascended gear. Obviously the recommended quality for your gear is the highest for the hardest content in the game. Obviously many pubs will require ascended gear because it gives a statistical numerical advantage over exotic before you even have to account for player skill. Even if the enrage timer were 50% longer, people will still require ascended gear because obviously you want the strongest.

In spite of all that, I still think exotics or more likely an exotic/ascended mix will be totally playable for groups who have figured out better what to do and how to maintain high DPS throughout all phases of the fight. If you’re adamant about never wearing ascended gear, and you are in one of these groups, you’re probably fine. Lastly, it’s a far different ordeal to have only one or two people in some ascended as opposed to having no ascended in the entire raid group.

Let’s also not forget that it’s also absurdly easy to get ascended trinkets, even if you can’t/won’t grind for ascended armor, and ascended weapons are a mere 50g each that can be acquired in less than 10 hours of very average playing… and if you need to you could totally get away with just 1.

Suffice it to say I really don’t think it’s that bad, and… raiding is not nor should it be for everyone. If you’re seriously not willing to put any effort into your gear whatsoever, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that you probably won’t be accepted for pub runs of raids, let alone organized group raid takedowns. Raids are designed to be something that not everyone can do.

I think most players who are interested in raiding would have ascended accessories. They’re even accountbound so you don’t need to get them again for alt characters unless you want the different stats/convenience. Having ascended weapons isn’t hard either, especially now you can change the stats in mystic forge. It will probably get even easier with the changes to Fractals making them easier to farm.

To put it bluntly, if you have less than half ascended you’re probably either new or too much of a slacker to be useful in a raid.

However, on FULL ascended, what’s the 6 armor pieces worth in DPS compared to exotic armor and ascended everything else? Can’t be much. It would generally be daft to say “sorry mate, your gloves are only exotic, we’re inviting someone else” unless the damage requirements are VERY tight.

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547:

And that was with relatively unoptimized strats and compositions compared to what we’ll see after launch. Sounds to me like exotics should be fine. Harder, yes, of course. But still quite doable.

Doable, as, there will be groups that will manage it from time to time? Yes, definitely. Just not for most players, and not with aboveaverage chances of success. It will still be in the category of “go in exotics, and you will most likely fail”. And i’m sure that for the majority of raiders it will remain as “go in exotics, and you will fail”.

As it should be…

It’s supposed to be challenging. It’s supposed to take many, many attempts to beat it. It can be done in exotics, but it’s obviously going to take longer than it would with BiS gear.

I’m with Dusk, I don’t really see what your point is. Do you want the top tier challenging content in the game to be easily cleared in subpar gear?

All I’m hearing from you is that it’s bad that exotic-geared players will have a harder time then ascended gear players, but that it’s still doable. This is exactly what Crystal said, and it’s a fundamental truth that better gear is, well, better…so what is your point?

If raids are based on exotic gears, then it will be truly pay to win as players with ascended gears will faceroll the content, or at least clear it with more ease than groups with exotics. Therefore you are already creating a gear treadmill among the community.
Second raid is suppose to be the hardcore content. Do keep in mind that hardcore players in this game already own more than 1 set of ascended armor and raids are cater to them. If you aren’t able to create ascended gears, you can try it with exotic. There is no AR check, and even if you can’t do raids in exotic gears, you have other options to enjoy the game.
And lastly, with the existence of ascended gear, people will ask you to ping your gear or see if you do have ascended gears because let’s face it; no one wants to carry other people especially in hardcore contents such as raids. It comes down to 3 choices in my opinion
Get ascended gear and do the raids with people that will have you, don’t get the asceneded gear and do the raids with people that will have you, or don’t do the raids and enjoy GW2 since there is so much to do.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

Once again, I refer to my post:

you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

Once again you miss the point.
Recommended gear is above what is required for a perfect run.
Yes some people will be able to beat the raid in exotics eventually
no, most of the people who beat the raid will not be able to, or desire to.
and they werent designed to.

Regardless, almost all serious attempts at success in raids will expect players to have ascended.

Stop decieving players by leading them to believe wearing exotics will be viewed as viable for the vast majority of raiders. It will not be. I know you like trying to win an argument, but be realistic here. This is not about what is possible, this is about what will be expected from players.

How are you so sure? You’re so adamant that players must be wearing ascended and you haven’t shown any reason as to why other than some players will require it. There’s more to winning than simply gear which should have been very apparent to you in last weekend’s beta when only a few groups won with access to the same gear.

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?

But just looking at the straight numbers, going from exotic to ascended:

Power: 2613 —> 2707 (3.6%)
Crit Damage: 226.40% --> 230.67% (1.89%)
Crit Chance: 62.43% —> 65.29% (4.58%)
Weapon Strength: 1048 --> 1100 (4.96%)

Exotics build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-TBCBwAGV+JRJI29Hwp+DgLAQKdAJM/F4BAAA-e
Rings build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-TBCBwAGVmJRJI29HlG4U/BwFAIlOgEm5C8AAAA-e
Accessory build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-TBCBwAGVGIRJI29Hle4U/BwFAIlOgEmhC8AAAA-e
Amulet build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-TxBBwASUCid/R5HgLAAO1fSpDIhJoAPAAA-e
Back build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-ThBBwAY3fU+B4CAgT9nU6AC8AAOrEEA-e
Weapons build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-ThBBwAY3fU+B4CAgT9nU6AC8AAOrEEA-e
Armor build http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWAmNMIAY0TYLcEiAQB4AIXySQKA-ThBBABYt/o8DgHAQe6AC4CAUp6PnpEEA-e

checkmate???? kappa

Tree.3916:

checkmate? kappa

Heh, is that directed at me? If I did something stupid feel free to call me out on it

I’m not terribly familiar with how these numbers translate into DPS, so it’s entirely possible that I left something out. I’ve just heard a lot of different numbers thrown around and want to pin down an accurate representation of the relevant stat changes and the practical difference between the performance of the gear sets.

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?:

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Even then, those people complaining about ascended ignore how incredibly easy it is to get trinkets. Ignoring daily achievement awards, it’ll take you 20 days to get both rings. It’ll take 4 weeks to get the commendations for the accessories. It’ll take 21 days to get enough laurels to buy the amulet from the WvW vendor. The back item can be made for under 10G.

All of these account for just a little under half of the damage boost. New players will likely have to wait a bit IF they feel they need these but then, with how challenging raids are supposed to be, would these players really have the skills necessary to beat them? We saw people who have played since launch fail repeatedly last weekend.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I don’t get the point you’re trying to make. Obviously ascended gear is better than exotic gear, so it makes absolute sense to use ascended gear if you can. Obviously times will be faster with ascended gear. Obviously the recommended quality for your gear is the highest for the hardest content in the game. Obviously many pubs will require ascended gear because it gives a statistical numerical advantage over exotic before you even have to account for player skill. Even if the enrage timer were 50% longer, people will still require ascended gear because obviously you want the strongest.

In spite of all that, I still think exotics or more likely an exotic/ascended mix will be totally playable for groups who have figured out better what to do and how to maintain high DPS throughout all phases of the fight. If you’re adamant about never wearing ascended gear, and you are in one of these groups, you’re probably fine. Lastly, it’s a far different ordeal to have only one or two people in some ascended as opposed to having no ascended in the entire raid group.

Let’s also not forget that it’s also absurdly easy to get ascended trinkets, even if you can’t/won’t grind for ascended armor, and ascended weapons are a mere 50g each that can be acquired in less than 10 hours of very average playing… and if you need to you could totally get away with just 1.

Suffice it to say I really don’t think it’s that bad, and… raiding is not nor should it be for everyone. If you’re seriously not willing to put any effort into your gear whatsoever, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that you probably won’t be accepted for pub runs of raids, let alone organized group raid takedowns. Raids are designed to be something that not everyone can do.

Point is first lets agree that ascended will be as you said heavily expected for most groups. The person and some others claim they will not be.
Accepting that is the case, the problem i see with ascended is:
1) time gated ramp up time of a month IF you have a guild that does missions.
2) experimentation and player ability hampered with multi sets. (inventory and grind/time investment)
This would be more feasible if you had ffxiv like armory system. (seperate armor inventory and build macros that can swap gear/skills)
And lower repetition farm based grinds or time gated for many ascendeds (most try to make you take at least a month for hardcore, more for casual)

Ayrilana.1396:

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?:

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Even then, those people complaining about ascended ignore how incredibly easy it is to get trinkets. Ignoring daily achievement awards, it’ll take you 20 days to get both rings. It’ll take 4 weeks to get the commendations for the accessories. It’ll take 21 days to get enough laurels to buy the amulet from the WvW vendor. The back item can be made for under 10G.

All of these account for just a little under half of the damage boost. New players will likely have to wait a bit IF they feel they need these but then, with how challenging raids are supposed to be, would these players really have the skills necessary to beat them? We saw people who have played since launch fail repeatedly last weekend.

28 days is a long time.

The point has never been that ascended will automatically win you raids i dont lnow why you keep bringing that up

dlonie.6547:

Tree.3916:

checkmate? kappa

Heh, is that directed at me? If I did something stupid feel free to call me out on it

I’m not terribly familiar with how these numbers translate into DPS, so it’s entirely possible that I left something out. I’ve just heard a lot of different numbers thrown around and want to pin down an accurate representation of the relevant stat changes and the practical difference between the performance of the gear sets.

The tool tip says 12.5 with infusions does that include criticals and crit chance?

Thats my main question

I don’t see this as an issue.

Based on what I saw in the raid fight, theorycrafting online and my own experiences with gear in game, I believe that a 10 player group with just ascended weapons, rings, trinkets and amulets will have more than enough stats to comfortably deal with base requirements – putting the emphasis on mechanics, where it should be.

To that point, ascended weapons are much easier to acquire than armor since no Damask is needed. As someone stated above, a max level crafter can make one weapon for about 50 gold.

Trinkets are even easier to get. Guild missions, laurels from daily logins (+WvW tokens to reduce the cost), fractals (of all levels) all provide them in some form.

So, for a minimal cost (which raid groups could easily help each other with if needed) and a little group effort, raid parties should be ready for raiding. It doesnt seem like a major hurdle to me.

Now, ascended armor is another story entirely. The prohibitive cost of damask and time gating on crafting means that a full set of ascended armor is a major investment for most players.

I dont see this as an issue because most of the needed stats for raiding come from the weapon and trinkets (the weapon, mainly). These will prepare players for the initial raids – where they can (hopefully) acquire the ascended armor needed for the later encounters.

This is all assuming that they wont make ascended armor easier to get in other areas of the game – which I believe they will with HOT.

Ayrilana.1396:

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Beautiful, just what I was looking for — thanks!

So in a nutshell, trinkets are a 4.8% increase, adding weapons is another 5.9%, and armor is a 1.8% increase, for a total of 12.5%. Neat how my underestimate (10%) and Astral’s overestimate (15%) pretty much split the difference.

Using the 70s remaining on the first kill as a baseline, the same team in full exotics would have had 10s remaining.

Considering that it’s highly unlikely for a full 10 man team to have 0 ascended pieces between them and that this fight was done without extensive practice/theorycrafting/etc, it sounds more than reasonable to say that it’s doable with exotics.

And again, in practice, you’re likely to have a mix of exotics and ascended gear in even a casual group, so the full 12.5% potential DPS loss isn’t likely to be realized.

Thanks again for the link, that’s really helpful.

phys.7689:

28 days is a long time.

If a full team of players who just joined the game 28 days ago could clear it, even in ascended gear, I’d not be happy with the difficulty with the content.

This is supposed to be a challenge for the many, many players who, today, have been soloing/duoing/etc Arah/FotM/etc for years. I don’t see how the accessibility to a month-old player is relevant.

Do you really want a full team of players who just got to 80 and are just starting to have access to exotic gear to be able to beat the top tier PvE content?

And just to be clear, they can still participate in the content at that point, but should need to be part of a more experienced team while they learn the ropes.

phys.7689:

1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

The fun fact is that daily restriction were implemented precisely to stop the growth of non casual players. But like with most restrictions, they usually give opposite results.

dlonie.6547:

And again, in practice, you’re likely to have a mix of exotics and ascended gear in even a casual group, so the full 12.5% potential DPS loss isn’t likely to be realized.

I have 3, almost 4, full ascended sets and I’ve never used stat infusions, and I don’t plan to ever get, so I’d say 10.28% increase is the normal for most players because I believe those who are actually using stat infusions are very very few. 10.28% damage increase is the exact same as most of the damage boosting traits.

Trinkets are the easiest to get, and there are multiple ways to earn them, so there is little excuse to not having full trinkets when you run a raid so the end DPS difference will be 5.5% (10.28% without infusions – 4.8% for the trinkets = 5.48%)

That 5.5% without infusions difference which is pathetic low. A miss-timed Lava Font will result in far less than 5.5% damage, or miss-timing most high damaging skills, or hitting a foe without damage modifiers active etc

In other words, playing well so you activate all your damage modifiers and timing your cooldowns will result in far higher damage boost than having full Ascended. A player in full Exotics that knows how to play will deal way more damage than a player in full Exotic that doesn’t know anything, Ascended can’t carry bad players.

So what I’m reading is, make your weapons, do you guild missions or spend your laurels on earrings (or do achievements for sinister), save laurels (or achievements for sinister) for neck, and do some fractals (or achievements) for rings. Boom you’ve gotten the majority of your advantage and work on armor if you feel like it (by far biggest investment). Ohh and back slot, ehh spend what is it like 100g to get the Thousand Arrows one? woopty do. Sound like you’re looking at a month or so of laurel farming, ~300g if you have your crafting done already, and doing a month of guild missions plus like 20 fractals.

Really something worth complaining about?

Jerus.4350:

So what I’m reading is, make your weapons, do you guild missions or spend your laurels on earrings (or do achievements for sinister), save laurels (or achievements for sinister) for neck, and do some fractals (or achievements) for rings. Boom you’ve gotten the majority of your advantage and work on armor if you feel like it (by far biggest investment). Ohh and back slot, ehh spend what is it like 100g to get the Thousand Arrows one? woopty do. Sound like you’re looking at a month or so of laurel farming, ~300g if you have your crafting done already, and doing a month of guild missions plus like 20 fractals.

Really something worth complaining about?

Let’s say you have no Ascended items now for some reason, and no laurels at all, you will have enough time until the Raid comes online to get most of those trinkets even if you start getting them after HoT is released. I really don’t see anything to complain about here, even those who will start collecting their ascended the day HoT is released can have a full set once the Raid appears, so “time” is a moot point.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?:

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Even then, those people complaining about ascended ignore how incredibly easy it is to get trinkets. Ignoring daily achievement awards, it’ll take you 20 days to get both rings. It’ll take 4 weeks to get the commendations for the accessories. It’ll take 21 days to get enough laurels to buy the amulet from the WvW vendor. The back item can be made for under 10G.

All of these account for just a little under half of the damage boost. New players will likely have to wait a bit IF they feel they need these but then, with how challenging raids are supposed to be, would these players really have the skills necessary to beat them? We saw people who have played since launch fail repeatedly last weekend.

28 days is a long time.

The point has never been that ascended will automatically win you raids i dont lnow why you keep bringing that up

Because you keep making the claim that it will over exotics. You at no point acknowledge what else goes into with encounters.

The 28 days is not a long time. Raids are permanent. We have at least that long until they go live.

Aye, they basically gave everyone a heads up “hey stop wasting your Laurels, start saving up and prepping, you’ll want ascended” and they did it with more than enough time to pull that off.

Jerus.4350:

Aye, they basically gave everyone a heads up “hey stop wasting your Laurels, start saving up and prepping, you’ll want ascended” and they did it with more than enough time to pull that off.

I see this mistake made time and time again.

You do not create systems based around the concept that people have been preparing for it for years, unless you only want that content to work for those people.

I have full ascended.
do all of my friends, who the expansion is trying to get back into the game?
does everyone who comes to the game from this point forward?
does the guy who wont become interested in raids till he sees them in game?

dlonie.6547:

phys.7689:

28 days is a long time.

If a full team of players who just joined the game 28 days ago could clear it, even in ascended gear, I’d not be happy with the difficulty with the content.

This is supposed to be a challenge for the many, many players who, today, have been soloing/duoing/etc Arah/FotM/etc for years. I don’t see how the accessibility to a month-old player is relevant.

Do you really want a full team of players who just got to 80 and are just starting to have access to exotic gear to be able to beat the top tier PvE content?

And just to be clear, they can still participate in the content at that point, but should need to be part of a more experienced team while they learn the ropes.

Uhh im pretty sure no one who actually wants to, needs a month of training to get good enough for raids.
Humans respond to stimulus, when there is a reason to improve, most will find a way to succeed.
raids will take a week of concerted effort if that for people to be able to beat it, starting from just being a level 80.

Do you really think if you handed a fresh 80 all the gear he needs, and trained him 2 hours a day for a week he would be unable to progress? I highly doubt it.

phys.7689:

do all of my friends, who the expansion is trying to get back into the game?
does everyone who comes to the game from this point forward?
does the guy who wont become interested in raids till he sees them in game?

Will these people still be able to progress in the raids in exotics?

Yes.

So what’s the problem? You’re still basing all of this on the falsehood that you can’t progress without ascended gear.

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Aye, they basically gave everyone a heads up “hey stop wasting your Laurels, start saving up and prepping, you’ll want ascended” and they did it with more than enough time to pull that off.

I see this mistake made time and time again.

You do not create systems based around the concept that people have been preparing for it for years, unless you only want that content to work for those people.

I have full ascended.
do all of my friends, who the expansion is trying to get back into the game?
does everyone who comes to the game from this point forward?
does the guy who wont become interested in raids till he sees them in game?

Exaggerate much?

And as dlonie said, you can still work on the raids in Exotics. It’s just outside of raids you might want to put some effort into getting ascended stuff to increase your strength in raids to be in par with what they’re designed for.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

dlonie.6547:

Astralporing.1957:

dlonie.6547

Ascended gear is a 10% increase over exotics.

About 15% for damage for the dps gear.

Can you share your source on that? I made up a quick spreadsheet (attached).

If any more experienced theorycrafters out there can shed some light on these numbers, it’d be appreciated, but it really seems as though both the 10% and 15% increases are exaggerated from these numbers. I assume those higher estimates account for buffs, rotations, etc? Are they looking at precision/ferocity/etc instead of effective crit chance/crit dmg? Or are they just not real?:

It makes it seem like there’s a larger difference between ascended and exotic if it gets rounded up. That’s probably why some people say 15%. I’ve seen it reported that the difference is about 10.28% without infusions and 12.5% with infusions.

https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

Even then, those people complaining about ascended ignore how incredibly easy it is to get trinkets. Ignoring daily achievement awards, it’ll take you 20 days to get both rings. It’ll take 4 weeks to get the commendations for the accessories. It’ll take 21 days to get enough laurels to buy the amulet from the WvW vendor. The back item can be made for under 10G.

All of these account for just a little under half of the damage boost. New players will likely have to wait a bit IF they feel they need these but then, with how challenging raids are supposed to be, would these players really have the skills necessary to beat them? We saw people who have played since launch fail repeatedly last weekend.

28 days is a long time.

The point has never been that ascended will automatically win you raids i dont lnow why you keep bringing that up

Because you keep making the claim that it will over exotics. You at no point acknowledge what else goes into with encounters.

The 28 days is not a long time. Raids are permanent. We have at least that long until they go live.

why would i mention something that is obvious and assumed to be true?
Of course skill is the main determinant of success on any challenging content (or it would not be challenging).
But that has absolutely nothing to do with the point.
Ascended is going to be, by the vast majority a, player enforced expectation for participating in raids.

I am sure because player psychology is simple, the raid was designed/balanced based on having ascended, and the data we have been shown coroborates that it will be a definate advantage in an encounter with an uncertain outcome.

phys.7689:

Do you really think if you handed a fresh 80 all the gear he needs, and trained him 2 hours a day for a week he would be unable to progress? I highly doubt it.

Please reread my post. I went out of my way to mention that a full party of inexperienced, undergeared players should not be able to clear it easily (As in, during their first few sessions).

If they put the time in to practice it, yes, they’ll get it eventually. In a week? Sure, if they’re dedicated to practice and fast learners.

And the point here is that not having ascended gear won’t prevent them from progressing. It’s about whether they’re willing to put in the time to practice the encounters and learn their to play their classes at a high level of proficiency. A single DPS trait worth of damage loss won’t make or break the team’s success.

Phys, having read your responses and everyone else’s responses here, I think we’re being reasonable and you’re just a little paranoid and overreacting. I’m convinced it’s not an issue based on every piece of evidence we have so far, and I am sure once you see the actual released content you’ll agree.