Guild Wars 2

I think this would be great, specifically for players who are stuck in the limbo of “I need ascended armor to progress in fractals but can’t get ascended armor to drop cuz I can’t progress in fractals” which seems fairly common.

As someone who always receives Ascended Chest Armor boxes and never any boxes of gear-types I actually need, I definitely support the ability to choose something.

It would also really help reduce the huge level of price-bloat with ascended armor crafting costs.

My concern:
The prices should not be the same for each item considering that there are different stat gains associated with each one. A good model to follow would be the relevant Magnetite Shard costs (i.e. off hand weapons cost less than 2 hand weapons, boots cost less than chestpieces)

UnbentMars.9126:

I think this would be great, specifically for players who are stuck in the limbo of “I need ascended armor to progress in fractals but can’t get ascended armor to drop cuz I can’t progress in fractals” which seems fairly common.

As someone who always receives Ascended Chest Armor boxes and never any boxes of gear-types I actually need, I definitely support the ability to choose something.

It would also really help reduce the huge level of price-bloat with ascended armor crafting costs.

My concern:
The prices should not be the same for each item considering that there are different stat gains associated with each one. A good model to follow would be the relevant Magnetite Shard costs (i.e. off hand weapons cost less than 2 hand weapons, boots cost less than chestpieces)

Ah, that’s true! Maybe something like 150 for Chest, 90 for gloves/boots/helm, 110 for shoulders, 120 for pants, 70 for 1h weapons, 140 for 2h weapons.

Ehh. Fractals were designed for someone who already have had made acsended gear. Its also not supposed to be a main way of getting ascended armor. From what ive seen the random dropsof them are somehwat frequent. And the gold per day from t4 fractals is great if u do them quickly. Also if your talking prostines it would have to be a lot more pristines. Like 500 or 400 for a chest piece then no less than 200 pristines for the rest of the pieces.

Terrowyn.4728:

UnbentMars.9126:

I think this would be great, specifically for players who are stuck in the limbo of “I need ascended armor to progress in fractals but can’t get ascended armor to drop cuz I can’t progress in fractals” which seems fairly common.

As someone who always receives Ascended Chest Armor boxes and never any boxes of gear-types I actually need, I definitely support the ability to choose something.

It would also really help reduce the huge level of price-bloat with ascended armor crafting costs.

My concern:
The prices should not be the same for each item considering that there are different stat gains associated with each one. A good model to follow would be the relevant Magnetite Shard costs (i.e. off hand weapons cost less than 2 hand weapons, boots cost less than chestpieces)

Ah, that’s true! Maybe something like 150 for Chest, 90 for gloves/boots/helm, 110 for shoulders, 120 for pants, 70 for 1h weapons, 140 for 2h weapons.

Yes, something exactly like that! Anet has access to data we don’t, so I’d leave the final numbers in their hands, but I think the rule-of-thumb that makes the most sense would be as follows:

First step should be to pick a set number of days that it should take for players to acquire a full set of armor and weapons assuming they do get every possible Pristine Fractal Relic every day (currently 14 per day). An additional calculation to add in would be to increase the number of days required by a certain amount that is dependent on the % chance of a box dropping as part of the daily(s) loot in order to balance it. This is better for Anet to do so I won’t speculate on how best to calculate that, so let’s assume an easy number of days estimation: 50 days for a total of 700 Pristine Fractal Relics needed to buy 6 pieces of armor + 2 weapons (I know it should be up to 4 but bear with me, I’ll explain why 2 in the meantime)

The next step is to weight prices according to the total stat contributions of each:

Boots, Gloves, and Shoulders all provide the lowest contribution, so they should be the same. Lets say ~60 per?
Headpiece stats are between the first 3 and pants, so ~70?
Pants would then be 80 and Chestpiece would be 90

This leaves 280 Pristine Fractal Relics to divide between the weapons. The reason I believe weapons should be the most expensive is because they provide the single largest boost to damage. To bring it back to my earlier statement regarding the cost of two weapons, I believe the total cost to the player for two 2-handers should be the same as four 1-handers. Therefore 1 handed weapons should cost 70 and 2 handers should cost 140.

The actual numbers can easily change based on how many days it is best for players to take in order to achieve this, but the principle is sound and would provide an avenue for players to receive the rewards and increase their ability to gain Agony Resistance while not punishing players who want to simply spend money to craft the items and get their ascended armor faster. It also provides an additional incentive to rank up the personal fractal level since higher tiers allow access to more pristine relics via dailies.

In summary: Anet plz?

That would be a massive increase in the drop rate of ascended gear in fractals, especially for lower tiers. It ignores all the other drops and coin gains that can be used to purchase ascended gear. Those who play the game for 300+ days have up to 600g from dailies alone, which is enough to buy the mats for six pieces of Zojja’s armor.

I’d like to see all armor drops changes to [Prefix] Box of Armor, instead of location-specific pieces — that would prevent us from dealing with having three shoulders, 2 boots, two gloves, and no legs or coat. However, I think the drops are pretty substantial already and don’t need to change.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That would be a massive increase in the drop rate of ascended gear in fractals, especially for lower tiers. It ignores all the other drops and coin gains that can be used to purchase ascended gear. Those who play the game for 300+ days have up to 600g from dailies alone, which is enough to buy the mats for six pieces of Zojja’s armor.

I’d like to see all armor drops changes to [Prefix] Box of Armor, instead of location-specific pieces — that would prevent us from dealing with having three shoulders, 2 boots, two gloves, and no legs or coat. However, I think the drops are pretty substantial already and don’t need to change.

That’s true, but I was thinking that if a system like that were to be introduced, then the drop rates would be reduced to a degree that offsets this. The system would eliminate randomness, but make getting ascended equally as difficult as the old random drop system. My numbers are probably off, but I just used them as an example.

As a player who plays fractals regularly (= daily if I can), I have to admit that the droprates are fine like they are at the moment. Additionally you are getting so much gold out of it you can buy lot of mats to craft the parts you don’t get by drops.
An increased drop rate or buying with pristine relics would facilitate the achievement of asc armor too much.
The idea of Illconceived Was Na sounds very good because I’m sitting on 4 useless gloves right now. ^^

Terrowyn.4728:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That would be a massive increase in the drop rate of ascended gear in fractals, especially for lower tiers. It ignores all the other drops and coin gains that can be used to purchase ascended gear. Those who play the game for 300+ days have up to 600g from dailies alone, which is enough to buy the mats for six pieces of Zojja’s armor.

I’d like to see all armor drops changes to [Prefix] Box of Armor, instead of location-specific pieces — that would prevent us from dealing with having three shoulders, 2 boots, two gloves, and no legs or coat. However, I think the drops are pretty substantial already and don’t need to change.

That’s true, but I was thinking that if a system like that were to be introduced, then the drop rates would be reduced to a degree that offsets this. The system would eliminate randomness, but make getting ascended equally as difficult as the old random drop system. My numbers are probably off, but I just used them as an example.

That sounds like your suggestion is to remove the random drop rate entirely and replace it with a token system. A lot of people believe they would prefer this. Then again, a lot of people bemoan the idea of grinding to get the right number of tokens (after which, people often avoid the particular game mode, having burnt themselves out).

There’s a lot to recommend token-loot systems and just as much to recommend RNG. This game offers a pretty good mix already in my opinion, (although obviously, it’s far, far from great).

In any case, during the AMA, the developers sounded as if they were pretty happy with the current loot for fractals, so it would take a really significant gameplay improvement to get them to revisit this any time soon. (Source — middle of the post.)

TheShniper.1852:

Ehh. Fractals were designed for someone who already have had made acsended gear. Its also not supposed to be a main way of getting ascended armor. From what ive seen the random dropsof them are somehwat frequent. And the gold per day from t4 fractals is great if u do them quickly. Also if your talking prostines it would have to be a lot more pristines. Like 500 or 400 for a chest piece then no less than 200 pristines for the rest of the pieces.

True. To hand out ascended gears it needs to be more in line with market rates. Wasn’t it 10 pristine for a non infused ascended ring? Pegging it to salvage rate of 2-4 stabilizing matrixes value of no more than 2g… and to craft an ascended gear probably cost 150 to 200g. The fair exchange should be 750 to 1000 pristine relics per ascended gear. You can pretty much get 2-3 full sets of ascended armor and weapons from doing T4 dailies for about 2-3 months. Some people probably get lucky and might be able to get a set in a week. I have horrible luck so I am referencing the 2-3 months of doing dailies at least few times per week.

I’m currently on fractal scale 55, but at what scale do you start to notice ascended gear boxes dropping more often?

alazol.8065:

I’m currently on fractal scale 55, but at what scale do you start to notice ascended gear boxes dropping more often?

Ascended drops with decent frequency from the Tiered reward chests. T4 is the optimum choice, because it gets you Master, Expert, Adept, & Initiate chests, roughly around 10-11% net chance from doing all three T4 challenges. That drops down to ~6-7% for just T3, ~2% for just T2, and < 0.5% for just T1.

(My numbers are based off ’s data from about a month ago . I ran monte carlo simulations on 10,000 daily runs and summed the results for both armor and weapons. Your mileage will vary, because none of us run that many fractals. You can still go a month or even two without an ascended gear chest…and someone will.)

Near as I can tell, personal level now only affects the non-chest loot, including karma and fractal currencies. In the past, low personal level almost always meant lower AR, but now, nearly anyone can get up to AR150 through gold alone (you need some currency if you don’t get infused rings to drop, but not all that much).

tl;dr if your goal is to get ascended armor or weapons, you want to do as many T4 fractals as you can (or as many T3 if you aren’t able to T4 yet).