Guild Wars 2

I have a suggestion: Agony-Resistance leveling.

Every time you complete a Fractal level, the character, that completed the level, will level up their agony resistance. It is permanent and the character will keep that agony resistance forever.

• Agony-resistance leveling will be character bound. This is so that lower fractal levels will be played. It will also keep agony infusion useful for the instant agony resist. It will take a lot of time to get a character to T4.
• Agony-resistance leveling will be granted for every unique instance level completed. This means that players cannot grind fractal 40 over and over again to get a permanent 150 Agony resist. They have to complete every single level from 1 to 100 to get a permanent 150 agony resistance.

This suggestion is to make Fractals more alt-friendly while giving progression for every other alt-characters.

runeblade.7514:

I have a suggestion: Agony-Resistance leveling.

Every time you complete a Fractal level, the character, that completed the level, will level up their agony resistance. It is permanent and the character will keep that agony resistance forever.

• Agony-resistance leveling will be character bound. This is so that lower fractal levels will be played. It will also keep agony infusion useful for the instant agony resist. It will take a lot of time to get a character to T4.
• Agony-resistance leveling will be granted for every unique instance level completed. This means that players cannot grind fractal 40 over and over again to get a permanent 150 Agony resist. They have to complete every single level from 1 to 100 to get a permanent 150 agony resistance.

This suggestion is to make Fractals more alt-friendly while giving progression for every other alt-characters.

To me that sounds like making fractals less friendly to alts, since it will take far longer than it does now to get to 150. If you’re suggesting that this permanent AR should be in addition to the removable infusions, then you’re undercutting the market for AR, which is among the rewards for completing fractals; ANet would have to rebalance.

What about the people who have already done 1-100? Will they get to choose which character gets permanent AR150? What about those who have done 10 on one character, 10 on another, and 10 on a third — will they have to do 270 fractals to buff all three?

It seems like a lot of work without a clear benefit for the majority of people interested in fractals.

runeblade.7514:

This suggestion is to make Fractals more alt-friendly while giving progression for every other alt-characters.

WTF? Your suggestion isn’t alt-friendly at all, it would be a giant pain in the ass for anyone who wants to bring alts to fractals.

CptAurellian.9537:

runeblade.7514:

This suggestion is to make Fractals more alt-friendly while giving progression for every other alt-characters.

WTF? Your suggestion isn’t alt-friendly at all, it would be a giant pain in the ass for anyone who wants to bring alts to fractals.

How so? It is way more alt-friendly than what we have now.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

To me that sounds like making fractals less friendly to alts, since it will take far longer than it does now to get to 150. If you’re suggesting that this permanent AR should be in addition to the removable infusions, then you’re undercutting the market for AR, which is among the rewards for completing fractals; ANet would have to rebalance.

I am not suggesting removing infusion in the game. This is an addition to go with Agony infusion. Making this agony-leveling character bound is there to make Agony infusion useful. Meaning if I want to make my newly character Druid to go to T4, then I would have to buy the ascended gear and infusion to go with it vs. Level up through 1-100.

What about the people who have already done 1-100? Will they get to choose which character gets permanent AR150? What about those who have done 10 on one character, 10 on another, and 10 on a third — will they have to do 270 fractals to buff all three?

Nope. They will have to start with 0 Agony resist levelingwise. However, they should have 150 AR gearwise already if they already did 1-100.

It seems like a lot of work without a clear benefit for the majority of people interested in fractals.

It is a clear benefit because I will not need to make a entire set of Ascended Gear for all my characters that I want to go to Fractals with. Instead, I can just Agony-level one character and get partial Ascended gear to get the agony resist required or I can just agony level my character all the way. If I am impatient, I can just craft Ascended Gear and instantly get my character to T4. Newer players can simply progress through the Fractals to get to T4 without needing to craft the expensive Ascended Gear.

This isn’t a replacement, this is an addition.

runeblade.7514:

Agony-resistance leveling will be character bound.

Please no more of this nonsense.

Currently we’re locked into a stupid outdated system because it’s deeply rooted into the game and Anet can’t do anything about it unless they’re willing to re-do everything from scratch (and even then it would have some unavoidable negative fallouts).
I recall one dev even specifically mentioning on the forums that they’ve been thinking about acc-based agony resistance (because duh – it would be like a million times better than this character-based stuff we have now), but they’ve already made their choice and it’s really hard to go back now.

It was this shortsightedness that caused Anet to do much more work than needed in order to fix all their obsolete and unpopular systems.

Everything they did from the start and all the systems they fixed – accbound dyes, skin wardrobe, accbound minis, ascended gear, legendary gear, etc… it was all to support alt-friendliness and get rid of some stupid and completely arbitrary character-binding.

Therefor, I think Anet will be very cautious with their decisions and will (hopefully) make all their future systems accbound, so they don’t have to go back later and rework them. Unfortunately, a lot of harm is already done and we have to live with it, but we can at least learn from the past mistakes and NOT make them again.

That being said, I still think there’s some merit to your suggestion if it’s tweaked a little bit. E.g. increase your permanent account agony resist by 1 point for every 2 completed levels – up to 50 points by the time you reach level 100. That would reduce the amount of agony resist you need for your alts from 150 to 100 and, in turn, would make it easier to gear your alts for FotM, but you would still require some infusions so the market would not disappear completely.

Thanks for clarifying. I can see why you like the idea.

I’m not a fan of it, because I’m against anything that I have to do more than once in terms of progression — that’s the sort of grind that drives me away from other games.

I do think that this would have made for a good account-bound mastery, if that had existed in 2012-3 when ANet was setting up the AR system. As it stands, it seems like a lot of work for something that augments the existing system. People who don’t fractal don’t necessarily need ascended and people who do should be able to manage to have a couple of shared armor sets.

In other words, as you’ve presented it, I wouldn’t like to see it in game. I’d prefer for ANet to work on something else. However, if they agreed, I’m sure I’d level up a toon (but not more than one).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not a fan of it, because I’m against anything that I have to do more than once in terms of progression — that’s the sort of grind that drives me away from other games.

^ this exactly.

99% of people will agree onto that, because making any system character-bound is arbitrarily forcing you to repeat the exact same activity you once did for your main X times for each of your alts. Of course you can choose NOT to do it (which is what most people will do), but then you’ll be missing out on it.

You can see Anet has realized that, albeit too late. For example, gliders are bound to your account. They could have just as easily bound them to individual characters. Although nobody wants that. Nobody wants to be focred to buy that 1 favorite glider of yours X extra times from the gemstore for each of your characters (and most people would end up buying NONE rather than buying more than 1, which would negatively impact the sales), hence why buying 1 will unlock it for all characters on your account. Same stuff with everything else…

Tarasicodissa.7084:

runeblade.7514:

Agony-resistance leveling will be character bound.

Please no more of this nonsense.

Currently we’re locked into a stupid outdated system because it’s deeply rooted into the game and Anet can’t do anything about it unless they’re willing to re-do everything from scratch

The pro about this is that ANet won’t have to rework everything from the start. ANet can simply just make an addition of completing each unique Fractal levels giving permanent AR to each character. Agony infusion will still be there and still useful.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

99% of people will agree onto that, because making any system character-bound is arbitrarily forcing you to repeat the exact same activity you once did for your main X times for each of your alts. Of course you can choose NOT to do it (which is what most people will do), but then you’ll be missing out on it.

You can always craft Ascended Gear and buy agony infusion if you don’t like the permanent AR grind. Just like what we have currently. Ascended Gear is account-bound anyways.

That means, you can choose NOT to do it(grind out agony levels), and you won’t be missing out on it(T4 Fractals).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I do think that this would have made for a good account-bound mastery, if that had existed in 2012-3 when ANet was setting up the AR system.

However, account-bound mastery is no longer the realistic option anymore because of what you said.

People who don’t fractal don’t necessarily need ascended and people who do should be able to manage to have a couple of shared armor sets.

• People who don’t play Fractal will still be able to access Fractals because they won’t need Ascended gear. The agony leveling system will level them up all the way to 150 even with only exotic gear. Even if they do not touch Fractals, it will be welcoming because they will not hit the ascended/agony wall.
• People who do fractals have the ability to play with any kind of gear. Rather than wasting 600g on a new set of ascended armor. I can go for the cheaper exotic gear. Meaning, if I feel like it, I can just get exotic cleric gear instead of wasting on a useless ascended cleric gear just for testing.

In other words, as you’ve presented it, I wouldn’t like to see it in game. I’d prefer for ANet to work on something else. However, if they agreed, I’m sure I’d level up a toon (but not more than one).

However, ANet are working on Fractals, but it isn’t very alt-friendly or welcoming. This QoL change will see use. If ANet agree with this, you may level up more than 1 toon because you could be bored with your current one. I know I get bored with playing with just only 1 toon. I would at least level 9 out of my 40 characters so that I can have a full class roster that can play fractals without needing 150 AR worth of ascended gear. Maybe more if I get bored and want to progress my characters after doing the fractal dailies.

I understand your love for Account-bound Agony resist, but just as you said. It isn’t realistic anymore.

Actually a terrible Idea, some people run fractals because of the gold it gives and part of the gold comes from agony resist.
If by your system you get AR by leveling it will take up a lot of time to get t4 then you’d get enough AR +1s to get to +150 by then. So what does this system really induce apart from the falling prices of AR….?

I wouldn’t mind seeing an account bound bonus for completing every fractal level. Say you get 10-15 AR on every character baseline once you finish all 100 fractals, doesn’t have to be on the same character. You could also potentially get another 5-10 for completing 100 CM. That would make it more alt friendly, since your alts wouldn’t need quite as much AR, but it would also not trivialize AR and you’d still have to make a decent investment to get alts to a high enough AR to do T4 fractals.

runeblade.7514:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I do think that this would have made for a good account-bound mastery, if that had existed in 2012-3 when ANet was setting up the AR system.

However, account-bound mastery is no longer the realistic option anymore because of what you said.

People who don’t fractal don’t necessarily need ascended and people who do should be able to manage to have a couple of shared armor sets.

• People who don’t play Fractal will still be able to access Fractals because they won’t need Ascended gear. The agony leveling system will level them up all the way to 150 even with only exotic gear. Even if they do not touch Fractals, it will be welcoming because they will not hit the ascended/agony wall.
• People who do fractals have the ability to play with any kind of gear. Rather than wasting 600g on a new set of ascended armor. I can go for the cheaper exotic gear. Meaning, if I feel like it, I can just get exotic cleric gear instead of wasting on a useless ascended cleric gear just for testing.

In other words, as you’ve presented it, I wouldn’t like to see it in game. I’d prefer for ANet to work on something else. However, if they agreed, I’m sure I’d level up a toon (but not more than one).

However, ANet are working on Fractals, but it isn’t very alt-friendly or welcoming. This QoL change will see use. If ANet agree with this, you may level up more than 1 toon because you could be bored with your current one. I know I get bored with playing with just only 1 toon. I would at least level 9 out of my 40 characters so that I can have a full class roster that can play fractals without needing 150 AR worth of ascended gear. Maybe more if I get bored and want to progress my characters after doing the fractal dailies.

I understand your love for Account-bound Agony resist, but just as you said. It isn’t realistic anymore.

Or you can just spend enough coin to cover 150 ar on jewelery and back item having it instantly on all your characters.
I got enough boxes and then some to deck out 1 light 1 medium and 1 heavy set, so can anyone who start to work on fractals mate.

Linken.6345:

Or you can just spend enough coin to cover 150 ar on jewelery and back item having it instantly on all your characters.
I got enough boxes and then some to deck out 1 light 1 medium and 1 heavy set, so can anyone who start to work on fractals mate.

Using just trinkets, there are a maximum of 10 infusion slots (6 from rings, 2 from accessories, and 2 from the backpack). To reach AR 150 would require 10x AR+15 infusions. Those are currently worth between 370 and 550 gold, so call it 450g average. Net cost of using trinkets, around 4500 gold.

Compare that to the cost of using even just 16 AR+9 slots: 110-120 gold.

The cost of adding six pieces of ascended armor runs from ~60 to 100g, depending on weight & piece, so let’s call it 80g/piece or 540g per set.

Not counting trinket costs, it costs about 650g to go from no AR to AR150 via traditional crafting.

In other words, you can gear up 7 different characters with ascended gear suitable for fractals for the same costs it takes to set up universal trinkets (which, alas, wouldn’t have universal stats that work for all builds).

tl;dr it’s unrealistic to expect that most people can get AR150 from trinkets alone. And those who could probably won’t, because they have other uses for their gold besides fractal gear.

It would be an easier solution just add agony infusion for every level 80 exotic item, then agony still have value and is easier to gear alts.
But i actually like the current system because we dont have many things to go for gear wise, so having somethings not super easy is good in my vision.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Linken.6345:

Or you can just spend enough coin to cover 150 ar on jewelery and back item having it instantly on all your characters.
I got enough boxes and then some to deck out 1 light 1 medium and 1 heavy set, so can anyone who start to work on fractals mate.

Using just trinkets, there are a maximum of 10 infusion slots (6 from rings, 2 from accessories, and 2 from the backpack). To reach AR 150 would require 10x AR+15 infusions. Those are currently worth between 370 and 550 gold, so call it 450g average. Net cost of using trinkets, around 4500 gold.

Compare that to the cost of using even just 16 AR+9 slots: 110-120 gold.

The cost of adding six pieces of ascended armor runs from ~60 to 100g, depending on weight & piece, so let’s call it 80g/piece or 540g per set.

Not counting trinket costs, it costs about 650g to go from no AR to AR150 via traditional crafting.

In other words, you can gear up 7 different characters with ascended gear suitable for fractals for the same costs it takes to set up universal trinkets (which, alas, wouldn’t have universal stats that work for all builds).

tl;dr it’s unrealistic to expect that most people can get AR150 from trinkets alone. And those who could probably won’t, because they have other uses for their gold besides fractal gear.

Ofcourse but OP wanted something to transfer around to all his characters and those 6 slots are the only ones you can do that.
Hence my suggestion, I never said it was a good idea.

I think exotic gear should be able to get infusion slots. You don’t even need ascended to do raids.

Or maybe better, have a way to add multiple infusion slots to 1 ascended item by doing fractals (only pure ar, not other stats). The infusion slot upgrade should be balanced so you can’t just put 150 +1s on the same item. You’d still need to buy multiple +8s and +9s, but it’s possible to affordably put them all on the same item.

This might be cynical of me, but all of this sounds like OP’s wish for running t4 fractals to be cheaper. I completely disagree with that as its already WAY too easy to get into T4’s as it is. All you have to do is actually play fractals.