Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

Ascended is going to be, by the vast majority a, player enforced expectation for participating in raids.

First off, this isn’t true. There are more casuals than hardcore players in this game. I’m an officer in a casual PvE guild that will not be enforcing ascended gear, and there are plenty of others out there, too. If these people want to raid without being forced into ascended gear, they just need to find an appropriate group to play with.

And more to the point, what are you advocating? Seriously, I want to know what your solution to these alleged problems would be.

From what I gather, you want to retune the encounter so that players in exotics won’t be pushed as hard.

Well, ascended gear is still better. The minmaxers are still going to push for ascended gear. Casual players still won’t care. All that happens is that the encounter gets neutered, and now those new players won’t be challenged by the content when they do get ascended gear.

This game has tried balancing endgame content around new/low-level players. Just look at AC — It doesn’t improve anything. Top tier endgame should be balanced for endgame players. ArenaNet has been more than generous by already allowing exotics to suffice.

dlonie.6547:

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.

a single dps trait on all players will make or break the teams success. Skill full play when it comes to this type of content has diminishing returns.
Basically you need more and more skill to get less and less gains. The perfect run team and the really good run team might only end up being seconds apart.

so essentially trying to get an extra 10% from skillfull play will be a noticeably tougher feat.
Also you are ignoring survivability in your analysis. taking 3-5% ,pre damage and healing for 2% less over the course of an 8 minute fight thats basically 1-2 less mistakes that can be made with the same success.

We’re going to have to agree to disagree, phys.

We’ve shown with math and examples of real-life clears of the content that exotic-geared players are capable of progressing past this boss.

We’ve shown that the difference between ascended gear and exotic gear is small enough that it will not prevent an exotics-clad team from depleting the Vale Guardian’s health before the timer runs out.

We’ve provided sound, logical arguments that the odds of a 10-man team that is solely geared in exotics (which could still beat the content) will not be a common occurrence.

We’ve shown that it is trivial to obtain enough ascended pieces that, by the time a player is ready skill-wise to enter a raid, they should still have a nice boost over the required and sufficient exotic gear.

I’m not sure what else there is to say. Your sole complaint seems to be that the Challenging Group Content is challenging, and that better gear is better than worse gear.

It’s a rare occurrence, but I’m at a loss for words at this point.

phys.7689:

Ascended is going to be, by the vast majority a, player enforced expectation for participating in raids.

Which is not the same as required by design.

dlonie.6547:

phys.7689:

Ascended is going to be, by the vast majority a, player enforced expectation for participating in raids.

First off, this isn’t true. There are more casuals than hardcore players in this game. I’m an officer in a casual PvE guild that will not be enforcing ascended gear, and there are plenty of others out there, too. If these people want to raid without being forced into ascended gear, they just need to find an appropriate group to play with.

And more to the point, what are you advocating? Seriously, I want to know what your solution to these alleged problems would be.

From what I gather, you want to retune the encounter so that players in exotics won’t be pushed as hard.

Well, ascended gear is still better. The minmaxers are still going to push for ascended gear. Casual players still won’t care. All that happens is that the encounter gets neutered, and now those new players won’t be challenged by the content when they do get ascended gear.

This game has tried balancing endgame content around new/low-level players. Just look at AC — It doesn’t improve anything. Top tier endgame should be balanced for endgame players. ArenaNet has been more than generous by already allowing exotics to suffice.

casual people are going to be some of the first people requiring ascended, because its the most controllable aspect, and having less time, they will want to ensure that victory is more likely.
A few high end relaxed people like yourself may exist, but even you cannot handle the large influx of sub geared people. You assume all the sub gear people will be ok with being handicapped. Most wont be, they will either focus on ascended, or quit playing, or decide to ignore raids.

And my solution would not be to retune the battle for exotics, that would only decrease the skill required, and ruin the content for everyone.

Basically they need to improve ascended aquisition to be more skill based, or have a more skill based method of obtaining it in addition to the old options.

progressing to get to play raids should be the type of content a raid player might enjoy not log in rewards and mindless grinds to get around the time gates

They need to reduce time gates, or get rid of them. Needing to log in even when you have nothing you want to do, shouldnt really be a gate for content. i know you guys figure joining a pre existing mission running guild just to get accessories is cool, but a lot of players dont see it that way, they feel like they are using the guild, or that they dont want to join this type of structure, this is lessened by them removing representation(i hear) but a lot of people wont be comfortable joining for this purpose, which basically takes them from one month to 3? months? Even leeching accessories from another guild, your still looking at 4 weeks, which is mostly waiting for a weekly reset.

lastly, with more gear becoming viable, and even reccomended, they need to build a system that handles multiple gear sets and swaps much better
take a look at this
http://ffxiv.wikia.com/wiki/Armoury_Chest
they basically set up a special inventory for different gears, you can literally carry around enough gear for 25 builds without dipping into your general inventory

which combines with the gear set system
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BpOQkLXqTGo/hqdefault.jpg
you can basically create a multitude of gear sets, and swap them with a single button press, pulling from the armory chest.

I always though gw2 needed this, but now with how they seem to want to handle raids, it seems even more necessary. I wouldnt use the exact system because gw2 has different concerns.
Id probably say they should create a gear stat unlock system, where a legendary unlocks all gear stats, and binding a gear set unlocks that stat/rarity. It could even have some resource based on exp/skill shards tied to it, if they want to make it more

dlonie.6547:

We’re going to have to agree to disagree, phys.

We’ve shown with math and examples of real-life clears of the content that exotic-geared players are capable of progressing past this boss.

We’ve shown that the difference between ascended gear and exotic gear is small enough that it will not prevent an exotics-clad team from depleting the Vale Guardian’s health before the timer runs out.

We’ve provided sound, logical arguments that the odds of a 10-man team that is solely geared in exotics (which could still beat the content) will not be a common occurrence.

We’ve shown that it is trivial to obtain enough ascended pieces that, by the time a player is ready skill-wise to enter a raid, they should still have a nice boost over the required and sufficient exotic gear.

I’m not sure what else there is to say. Your sole complaint seems to be that the Challenging Group Content is challenging, and that better gear is better than worse gear.

It’s a rare occurrence, but I’m at a loss for words at this point.

no you miss my point entirely, you assume i want to make the content tuned for exotics.
My point is
Its going effectively be that most people need ascended to do it.
therefore obtaining ascended needs to be more in line with raid progression, and how skilled players play, which is less based on time spend or days since purchase, and more about beating difficult content.

Lets look at fractal progression, which was not perfect, but has a clear progression.

Everything you need to progress in fractals, is available in fractals
by playing harder, you can obtain progress notably faster.
You can play hard and get to level 10 fast, which will give you more chances for a ring per day, and the mist essences to upgrade.
beating fractals allows you to get/buy agony infusion.

you can hit 80, start doing fractals instantly, as you get better, everything you need to progress in fractals is given to you as you proceed.
you only need rings/backpiece to get the maximum required agony resist, as you progress you are more likely to get the things you need.
It has some bumps,and is a little grindy(moreso since the change i think) but it in general allows you to progress in the type of play you are trying to advance in. a hardcore fractal guy, can probably get 2 rings, from level 0 fractals in a week. See how it adapts to the type of player? (somewhat)

Ascended aquisition is only like this for fractals.
armor, accessories, and amulet are based around entirely different paradigms
amulet is a log in reward
weapons is crafting /gold/gathering bonus
armor is a larger crafting /gold/gathering/bonus
backpiece is fractal based, but requires a high level of investment, or gold grind.

point is, as the game currently is, even though ascended must be reccomended for raid progression(or it would be easy), the means of obtaining what you need are not in line with skilled play which focuses on acheiving more difficult things less often, as opposed to time gates, and gold grind which generally represent an almost opposite playstyle/mindset.

Well, should have said that earlier, I’m not going to argue about getting ascended more easily.

Ok, I found some more words. I’m never quiet for long

phys.7689:

A few high end relaxed people like yourself may exist, but even you cannot handle the large influx of sub geared people.

Bring it on :P The multitude of friendly PvE teaching guilds are absolutely starved for new players and new content at this point, lol.

And for the fears that casuals will be enforcing BiS, I’m sure that some will. New players shouldn’t join those groups. It’s quite an overreaction to assume that all groups will require it, though. There are still loads of PvE guilds around that don’t enforce zerk gear, and that’s indisputably better for the current game’s PvE. But some people don’t care, and they won’t suddenly start caring more about gear than just having fun with guildies because raids roll out.

And my solution would not be to retune the battle for exotics, that would only decrease the skill required, and ruin the content for everyone.

Glad to hear it. That’s why you’re receiving so much backlash here, because your posts have sounded like you want to nerf the content before we’ve really even had a chance to experience it.

Basically they need to improve ascended aquisition to be more skill based, or have a more skill based method of obtaining it in addition to the old options.

I’m all for more options to get ascended gear. Fractal RNG is a kitty, chest farming is painfully boring, and everything else is a very slow slog to full armor.

They need to reduce time gates, or get rid of them. Needing to log in even when you have nothing you want to do, shouldnt really be a gate for content.

Well, hopefully post-HoT people will want to log in again. And I thought this was a discussion about new/returning players? If they’re new or returning and don’t want to log in, they probably won’t be around long enough to raid if they don’t enjoy the game.

i know you guys figure joining a pre existing mission running guild just to get accessories is cool, but a lot of players dont see it that way, they feel like they are using the guild, or that they dont want to join this type of structure, this is lessened by them removing representation(i hear) but a lot of people wont be comfortable joining for this purpose, which basically takes them from one month to 3? months? Even leeching accessories from another guild, your still looking at 4 weeks, which is mostly waiting for a weekly reset.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment#Trinkets

Amulet: Available from logging in. Cheaper if you WvW.
Ring: Available from logging in, or running fractals. Cheaper if you WvW, certain stats available from LS2.
Accessories: Laurels + gold, guild commentations, LS.
Backpiece: Fractals or just gold in forge.

Other than logging in, players aren’t locked into a single way to get any of these. Yes, it takes time to get a lot of laurels, but it should take time to get skilled enough for high-end PvE, too. And still — none of it is required, unless a player is dead-set on playing with minmaxers or tryhards.

It’s also worth pointing out that ascended gear has been easier and easier to get since its introduction. That trend will only continue as we see GM Jeweler, raid drops, etc. I have a feeling you’ll see more, easier ways to get the BiS gear with HoT.

lastly, with more gear becoming viable, and even reccomended, they need to build a system that handles multiple gear sets and swaps much better

100% agree. It’s a long overdue feature.

dlonie.6547:

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.

Increased critical chance also means more procs from certain things.

For example some quick math with Rending Strikes (4 s vuln, 33% chance on crit). I will assume 1 hit per 0.75 seconds and 80% critical chance. You can keep up on average 4 * 0.33*0.8 / 0.75 = 1.4 vuln stacks. It benefits 5 (or 10) players in the party which is like 1.4 * 5 = 7% (14%) personal damage boost.

With 5% extra critical chance you can keep up 1.5 stacks which means 7.5% (15%) personal damage boost. So with that trait, ascended gives additional 0.5% (1%) damage increase.

tl;dr; Add few on-critical effects and the total damage increase could reach 15%.

I can’t believe we have like 3 pages useless text that gets us nowhere. We just have to accept that ascended is better and move on.

Tree.3916:

I can’t believe we have like 3 pages useless text that gets us nowhere. We just have to accept that ascended is better and move on.

We all don’t disagree with ascended being better than exotics. We, or at least I, don’t agree that it’s required.

Tree.3916:

I can’t believe we have like 3 pages useless text that gets us nowhere.

Don’t tell me you’re surprised!

#ForumLyfe

But yeah, fair point. I think the bottom-line feedback from this thread, which most of us would agree on, is that raids should provide ascended armor chests, like fractals. I’d also add that ascended amulets would be a nice reward, too, since they have the least availability of the trinkets. Maybe even weapon crates, too, while we’re at it.

This would discourage some of the exclusion, since players joining the raid team will naturally get ascended gear faster so it’d be less of a practical concern to accept someone new who’s still rockin’ full exotics.

I’d prefer these as token-based rewards rather than drops to avoid another FotM / Ascended Ring situation (“Oh boy! I got another uninfused ring with awful stats!”). Even with ascended salvaging, ascended drops would end up being disappointments once full geared and farming for legendary rewards.

Edit: Oh, I just remembered this: http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-designing-raids-in-heart-of-thorns/

Raid Loot:
- You will not 2 blues and a green. You will get stuff like Ascended Rewards.

So yeah, 3 pages of text that accomplish nothing xD

Didn’t they already say ascended chests are a raid drop, and the rates are higher because of the weekly lockout.

SlyDevil.3952:

Didn’t they already say ascended chests are a raid drop, and the rates are higher because of the weekly lockout.

Yes at around 10%.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes at around 10%.

Isn’t this the drop rate for ascended from fractals L50, which only have a daily lockout? If they’re really going with a weekly timeout, hopefully the chance is much higher than 10%.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes at around 10%.

Isn’t this the drop rate for ascended from fractals L50, which only have a daily lockout? If they’re really going with a weekly timeout, hopefully the chance is much higher than 10%.

Maybe something that should be pointed out to Crystal. Perhapsa 30% drop rate would be better.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes at around 10%.

Isn’t this the drop rate for ascended from fractals L50, which only have a daily lockout? If they’re really going with a weekly timeout, hopefully the chance is much higher than 10%.

Thought it was 16% in fractals.

The drop rates:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

I’m assuming that nothing has changed since then to make the document inaccurate.

Considering the chance of not getting a fractal box after a week(ascended) was like 68%(was this the number), shouldn’t raids be sitting above 60% for a random ascended piece? or make it so you can select any piece with a lower drop rate?

SlyDevil.3952:

Considering the chance of not getting a fractal box after a week(ascended) was like 68%(was this the number), shouldn’t raids be sitting above 60% for a random ascended piece? or make it so you can select any piece with a lower drop rate?

Chance of Not getting an ascended box in 50’s alone was 28% for a week of running. It was 71% chance to get one.

So, if it’s to be higher than fractals for a week it’d be higher than 71%, though we’re getting what 2 more bosses with this wing? is that right? so like say 25% per boss or something?(I forget and can’t get myself to care about the math of statistics).

Ok ascended loot boxes is a good start. Too bad its only once per week/10% chance.

Hopefully they tweak that to 100% for raid completion and maybe a random 10% for raid bossses.

1 piece per week aint that crazy

http://dulfy.net/2015/09/26/gw2-twitchcon-designing-raids-in-heart-of-thorns/ not specifically, but they said ascended gear, and after accessories are so easy to get, I’m assuming it’s armour/weps

Did they ever specifically state whether the lockout for the rewards would be across all raids, per wing, or per raid section within a wing? The blog kind of seemed like it was across everything but I’m not sure.

Lockout is per boss, per wing, per raid, per week.

SlyDevil.3952:

Lockout is per boss, per wing, per raid, per week.

So if that is true, the more raids they release, the less of an “issue” ascended will become.

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

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?

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%)

Weapon strength and power already make up a ~9% damage boost.

Take the warriors auto attack vs a 2000 armor target. (Weapon strength * Power * .70 )/2000
1100*2707= 2,977,700 * .7= 2,084,390 /2000= 1,042
1048*2613= 2,738,424 *.7= 1,916,896/2000= 958
958 →1,042 = 8.76% increase.

Now that’s with no crit or crit damage. Remember that 9% will be further increased with each crit. That measely 84 dmg difference is suddenly a bunch more because of percentages.
2169 – 2403= 234 or 10.78% difference

The crit rate of course we can just make a flat % DPS increase for easy math of 10.78%+4.58% = 15.38%

That of course is just an auto-atack and not accounting for boons. This is not as easy as looking at the stat increase on the armor and saying “It’s only 3% more stats!”. The percentages and multipliers behind the scenes make a 3% increase a sizable damage boost. By all means check my math, I am a baker not a math expert, and I’m pretty sure that if you start looking at boons and bigger multiplier attacks the dps increase gets even bigger.

I’m not saying that the raids should be tuned for exotic either. I’m saying that ascended needs to be made more accessible so that the determining factor for the raid is skill, not gear.

dlonie.6547:

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

tokens would lead to the same problem except youd have useless tokens. chances arem if they add salvaging, they will also make mats more needed. Legendary crafting will probably use a decent amount.

keep in mind as well, the good stuff is limited to 1/week

it might still be a problem long term, but i dont think tokens would change much.5

dlonie.6547:

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

Ascended loot drops will probably be in the form of boxes (like we currently have for other content rewards).

I could possibly see Ascended armor salvaging into guaranteed dark matter and 1 leather/steel/damask.

Rings salvage into a Fractal-specific “encryption” thing, which makes since as they only drop in the Fractals.

I think it’d make sense for Ascended armor salvaging to more generally help with Legendary armor crafting.

phys.7689:

dlonie.6547:

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

tokens would lead to the same problem except youd have useless tokens. chances arem if they add salvaging, they will also make mats more needed. Legendary crafting will probably use a decent amount.

Just like with fractals, there can be other token-based rewards so that they’d still have value after completing your ascended set. And yes, the details of ascended salvaging could render my point moot, but it’s something that should be considered by the team.

phys.7689:

dlonie.6547:

This does sort of worry me. Unless ascended salvaging is amazingly profitable, these are going to be trash drops (like fractal rings) after a while.

If salvaging these things just gives us bloodstone dust and obi shards, I’d much rather see a token system for buying ascended gear, and let drops be something I can throw on the TP if I don’t need them.

tokens would lead to the same problem except youd have useless tokens. chances arem if they add salvaging, they will also make mats more needed. Legendary crafting will probably use a decent amount.

keep in mind as well, the good stuff is limited to 1/week

it might still be a problem long term, but i dont think tokens would change much.5

Would be easy to add a more liquifiable asset to the token merchant so even if you had every account bound thing you could ever want, you could just convert to gold at some ratio that fluctuated with the market.