Guild Wars 2

So, we’ve now heard the gap in stats between Exotic and Ascended gear will be increasing from about 5% to 10%. Opinions on the boards are everything from it doesn’t matter it’s still a tiny difference to this is the worst move ANet can make and will push anyone not inclined towards crafting and grind out of the game (or WvW at least). Well, let’s take a look at how this will actually change, then make a more informed decision.

Fist of all, the 5% and 10% figures are a bit misleading. Currently, yes Ascended gear gives about an additional 5% in stats. However, Ascended weapons also give 5% extra damage from the weapon itself. An Exotic sword can roll 905-1000, while an Ascended sword can roll 950-1050.

GW2 Damage Formula
Damage in GW2 is a simple multiplication formula of: (Skill Coefficient x Power x Rolled Weapon Damage) / Target’s Armour.

If a critical hit is landed, the above damage is multiplied by Ferocity. What this means is the 5% gap in stats is multiplied through 2x for a normal hit and 3x for a crit.

Quick Numerical Gear Comparison
Let’s assume Exotic gear is our baseline. It has 1 for Power, Ferocity and Weapon damage (the real numbers for any actual build can be put in for the 1 values, but I’m doing this just to show proportion. Ascended gear just multiplies the upgraded value with the extra 5 or 10%). Current Ascended would give 1.05 for each, while skill coefficient and target armour are the same for both.

This means a normal hit currently does 1.05*1.05 = 1.1025 or 10.25% more damage in Ascended gear vs Exotic. A critical hit currently does 1.05*1.05*1.05 = 1.1576 or 15.76% more damage. That’s pretty significant.

If we take the Ascended numbers and make the gap 10% instead of 5%, well I’m sure you can see this coming:

Normal hits 1.10*1.10 = 1.21 or 21% more damage for upcoming Ascended
Critical hits 1.10*1.10*1.10 = 1.331 or 33% more damage for upcoming Ascended

Thoughts
Now granted, Ascended gear only gives the flat percentage increase to survivability, but at the point where it means damage focused gear specs can put out 20-33% more damage, that is a huge difference and honestly completely ridiculous.

It is possible weapon damage won’t change, in which case new Ascended would be:
Normal: 1.05*1.10 = 1.152 or 15.2% more damage
Crit: 1.05*1.10*1.10 = 1.2705 or 27.05% more damage.

It’s also true I haven’t accounted for the base attribute scores on any level 80 (recall traits won’t give stats any more), since I’m not 100% certain where these base 80 stats will land with all the coming changes. However, the examples above still show the main point, that the gear difference is already certainly noticeable and with the proposed changes it will become near mandatory for any damage focused build.

Challenge to ANet
So, my main question and challenge to ANet is this. What is the driving reason to make Ascended such an exclusively superior gear set, when places like WvW already have trouble attracting newer players who have no hope of having this gear? Is this really a smart move with how restricted ascended armour and weapons are, since these are both time gated and only realistically attainable through crafting, which not all players enjoy or want to pursue (yes, ascended does drop rarely in certain places, but it’s no way to get a matching set)?

What happened to “play your own way” and there “will definitely be multiple ways to gain ascended gear?” Why have I, as a player who is constantly changing gear and builds because I love tinkering with things, been consistently punished for doing so verses just making one exclusive gear set and never changing it?

Finally, in a meta that is already all about the glass cannons in a lot of places, why reinforce this even more with higher Ascended stats? The damage stats multiply quickly, the survivability stats not as much (though yes having more toughness over healing power or vitality will have a joint effect).

TL:DR
New ascended gear will have a 20-33% damage boost over exotics, based on gear alone verses the current 10-15%. That looks to be a very, very sharp difference in tiers.

A large percentage of the increase comes from trinkets which are incredibly easy to get. Ascended weapons provide the next largest gain and are relatively cheap to make compared to ascended armor. These provided about a 10.40% damage increase based on calculation someone did in April. Ascended armor was less than 2%.

The vast majority of the damage increase one would get from ascended is still easily accessible to the average player.

I’m just not sure about these numbers… I’m just now hearing about this through forum backlash. Can anyone tell me where this announcement was made? If these numbers are accurate, I will be disappointed. I’ve always loved this game, and promoted it to my friends on the basis that it was easily accessible without grind and thousands of hours spent. This new development destroys that. It makes Anet look bad, and makes me look bad for dragging my friends into a game they thought they would like, only to have the rug torn out from under them (so to speak).

Hopefully some aspect of HoT justifies this, and I hope people keep an open mind at least until we get to test things for ourselves.

The prevailing gear recommendations have been Ascended weapons/trinkets and exotic armor up to this point. They have rebalanced stats and buffed Ascended gear by 5%, which now makes the ascended gear we had better and makes the ascended armor (more) viable. I’ve done some math for you (posted previously as well):

Current Exotic Armor Stats:
315/224/224
Exotic Armor Stats + 30% (Projected):
410/291/291

Current Ascended Armor Stats:
329/235/235
Ascended Armor Stats, Exotic+5% (Projected):
431/306/306
Ascended Armor Stats, Exotic+10% (Projected):
451/320/320

The difference from 5% to 10% (what everybody is all worked up over) is about 20 main stat and 14 off stat. Not that big of a deal.

Ayrilana.1396:

A large percentage of the increase comes from trinkets which are incredibly easy to get. Ascended weapons provide the next largest gain and are relatively cheap to make compared to ascended armor. These provided about a 10.40% damage increase based on calculation someone did in April. Ascended armor was less than 2%.

The vast majority of the damage increase one would get from ascended is still easily accessible to the average player.

Exactly right about the weapons. The numbers I give above hinge on the fact that Ascended gear not only increase stats, but the actual weapon damage too. I treated the stats in a blanket form to keep it simple, but the problem is the stats compound on each other, making the in-game effect change a much larger amount than the small stat increase.

So yes, right now full Ascended gear gives something like a 12% damage buff. But because of how weapon damage, ferocity and power all multiply together increasing the gap has a much sharper effect than it says on the label. A current 5% gap is more like 12% damage increase, and a 10% gap would be more like 25-28%. This also means that by increasing the gap, the armour stats become more significant and it’s not as easy to get by with just a weapon.

As for easily achievable, that I will have to dispute. Trinkets are dead easy, no question. And yeah, maybe to get a weapon set is just fine. But leveling 500 crafting is an expensive endeavour, difficult for any player who isn’t in the game just to grind gold (or the mats) every time they play, or is still fairly new to it.

It is also a question of play style, not everyone uses the same 2 weapons all day every day. My main regularly uses 9 different weapons and has 4 armour sets. I have another 3-4 toons I also run things with quite regularly. Outfitting them all would take an utterly ridiculous amount of resources. I certainly don’t want everything in the game to be easy and free to get, but there are players who enjoy tinkering with a large variety of stuff more than they do the quest to get one set, and I don’t feel that this method of play should be punished. There’s plenty of other ways to have exclusive stuff with much higher difficulties to obtain (skins, legendaries and so on).

The main point however, isn’t even the resources required for Ascended, it’s that Anet is making Ascended even more exclusively the top level gear, and there’s only one way to reliably get those weapons and armour.

For me, and certainly others, crafting in GW2 is about as engaging as watching a spreadsheet run automated formulae, because actually writing a spreadsheet or watching paint dry has more interest and variation than GW2 crafting does. I’m happy some people enjoy crafting and for that reason it should definitely stay, but there has to be viable, alternate ways to get best in slot gear with roughly equal effort.

And that’s the choice I feel ANet needs to make here. Either make Ascended better BiS gear but add multiple ways to get it in a reasonable time period for people who play with more than one or two gear sets or keep Ascended at its current level where full Exotics are still close enough to play along just fine, if at a small but noticeable disadvantage.

Helequin.2608:

… keep Ascended at its current level where full Exotics are still close enough to play along just fine, if at a small but noticeable disadvantage.

That’s exactly where Ascended is and will be, even after this buff. The Weapon/Trinkets are already BiS and have been for a while, and are pretty easy to get, so there is nothing is new there. The armor was the only optional part…if you feel it’s worth it to get 40 main stat/29 off stat, then go for it. If not, don’t. It is exactly a small, but noticeable, disadvantage.

Why? Because of my favorite modern four letter word. Monetization.

GW2’s primary revenue is the all-encompassing monetization of gold via gems conversion.

Anet makes money when you participate in the economy. It’s so important that they hired a real world economist to help design and maintain the game.

Exotics require none to little participation. Ascended weapon and armor acquisition was designed to require you to focus on that participation. Ascended was too kind to players who didn’t want to grind, so they’re turning the psychological screws.

It’s why the game launched with players being rewarded their gear progression directly from content, but now is largely a gold grind activity.

You’ll continue to see more of this kind of thing to push players into the economy I’m sure. It’s just too bad that they can only do that with simple reskins of the traditional mmo mechanisms that they built their reputation on opposing.

The funny thing is that they would not have needed those mechanisms had they not dropped things like heroes, secondary professions, and large customizable skill set hunting.

These things provided for a game with very low vertical progression that you could repeat endlessly for a vast horizontal experience while sidestepping all of the player frustration found in traditional vertical systems.

Without them, or adequate replacements, you’re left with the industry status quo despite all of the player centered innovations in other areas of the game.

Btw, if you’d like to future-proof yourself from some of this, you should probably make sure you have all of the ascended trinket sets you want or will want later on. I’d put money on them being removed from the current easy acquisition methods when they’re added to crafting.

where is the source of this information on the ascended gear change?

Helequin.2608:

Exactly right about the weapons. The numbers I give above hinge on the fact that Ascended gear not only increase stats, but the actual weapon damage too. I treated the stats in a blanket form to keep it simple, but the problem is the stats compound on each other, making the in-game effect change a much larger amount than the small stat increase.

So yes, right now full Ascended gear gives something like a 12% damage buff. But because of how weapon damage, ferocity and power all multiply together increasing the gap has a much sharper effect than it says on the label. A current 5% gap is more like 12% damage increase, and a 10% gap would be more like 25-28%. This also means that by increasing the gap, the armour stats become more significant and it’s not as easy to get by with just a weapon.

As for easily achievable, that I will have to dispute. Trinkets are dead easy, no question. And yeah, maybe to get a weapon set is just fine. But leveling 500 crafting is an expensive endeavour, difficult for any player who isn’t in the game just to grind gold (or the mats) every time they play, or is still fairly new to it.

It is also a question of play style, not everyone uses the same 2 weapons all day every day. My main regularly uses 9 different weapons and has 4 armour sets. I have another 3-4 toons I also run things with quite regularly. Outfitting them all would take an utterly ridiculous amount of resources. I certainly don’t want everything in the game to be easy and free to get, but there are players who enjoy tinkering with a large variety of stuff more than they do the quest to get one set, and I don’t feel that this method of play should be punished. There’s plenty of other ways to have exclusive stuff with much higher difficulties to obtain (skins, legendaries and so on).

The calculations to show the percentages, as well as account for compounding, can easily be made. This can easily be done in a spreadsheet. The damage gap would be more like ~20% than 25-28%. And again, most of this is from items that are easily obtainable.

All trinkets are very obtainable. You have laurels and pristine relic for the ring or you can rely on RNG for the stats you want from the fractal daily chest. Earrings you can get from WvW season rewards, laurel vendor, or the guild vendor. There are many ways to get the back pieces and the LS has provided relatively cheap ways to get them as well.

Crafting costs about 120 gold on average to get to 500 for either of the weapon crafts. The largest portion comes from ectos, orichalcum ore, and the recently spiked in price ancient wood logs. All of these are very easily farmable if someone doesn’t want to do the SW chest farm. You can also allocate this cost across the number of weapons that you make. I often do this when trying to justify a purchase that has an initial upfront cost.

Not everyone uses every single weapon type on a regular basis either. Some people only have one character while others claim to have 20+ that they need to outfit not counting the various stat combos they claim they must have. The amount of grind and hardship in equipping characters is entirely reliant on the player.

I made a set of berserker for each armor weight and then soldier for the heavy weight. I’m still contemplating on whether to use the damask I have now and make another armor set. For weapons, it’s the same thing. I have no problem swapping equipment between characters. It’s fairly painless to go to a bank and swap them. I usually log out at the bank on all of my characters so I can just put the equipment into the bank as I’m about to log this way I can freely come back at another time and use them on another character if I so wish.

Oh. Also keep in mind of the stat caps. If you ever are down-scaled while in full ascended, you likely have hit the cap and will have “wasted” stats. Ascended weapons are also no better than exotic weapons when down-scaled.

I’m also not against other alternative, reliable ways to get ascended being added so long as it requires as much time/effort as the existing methods.

OP your math is wrong. It just doesn’t line up to my experience in game. I’ve played a long time and fiddled with tons of armor. In the end what I wear had little effect in damage or defense.*

*armor only, if I changed trinkets and weapon too that made a much bigger difference.

Seriously try it. Wear your zerk gear. Then put on some exotic soldier armor. You’ll barely notice a difference……

not the best example since, better one but one most won’t have access to is cele vs zerk. If I wear all cele armor I barely even notice the loss of power/dps. And the diff between asc and exo is goiing to be less than say the difference of dps from cele/berzerker

For wvw at least, it doesnt matter, as you neglect the increase in toughness and vitality in your calculation, which balances it out.