Guild Wars 2

First at all: This thread it not a complain thread that GW2 has become a grind fest, or a gear trademill, I basicly don’t agree with that, but it’s not the point of this discussion, I want to discuss something else about Ascended gear

So, as you might already know, the Jan update came with several new Ascended amulets, however, yet again, they are completely against a large variation of builds.
This is because:

• Not all kind of prefixes are there, e.g. Knight, Carrion, Apothecary and many more simply do not have any kind of Ascended Ring, Amulet or backitem.
• You could upgrade Exotic (or lower) Accessories = Build variation. Now they come with the item itself. The only thing you can upgrade, is the kind of Infusion you want. The standard +5 Agony Resistance, which is USELESS in anything but Fractals, could come with +5 Vitalty, or +5 Power… Woow!

ANet wanted to (not sure if they still want to) introduce Ascended Weapons & Armor in the future…. Please no! If you would do the same as what we’ve seen now, everyone would run with the same gear, same stats… less or no variation at all…
Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

I agree. Knight’s gear and several other spreads are strangely missing. This has lead me to modify my build. It’s a bit annoying, but I was able to manage.

Agreed, old gear system (exotics) was more flexible. I see no reasons to go away from it.

Riselight.3695:

ANet wanted to (not sure if they still want to) introduce Ascended Weapons & Armor in the future…. Please no! If you would do the same as what we’ve seen now, everyone would run with the same gear, same stats… less or no variation at all…
Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

I agree. If ascended items were just meant to be a higher tier that allows players to play the way they want as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction to grinders demanding grind, ANet would make all exotic stat combinations available for gold and karma in PvE, and have at least one ascended item for each combination. Ascended weapons and armor are probably coming. It’s like watching a slow train wreck =)

I wonder what their reasoning was regarding the withheld stat sets. With the current Ascended stats there is no efficient way to gain healing power. I understand ANet is trying to remove pure healers, but traits and skills handle that – a healing power set simply allows for a better team-play build on certain classes.

As for the Knight’s gear.. I think ANet is trying to re-design where players get precision from. You can either have armor or you can have precision, but not both. With a full ascended knight’s set a player could obtain a large amount of attack, armor, and critical chance which would allow a player to be tanky while doing high DPS.

For now… it’s odd, but Exotic > Ascended for some builds o.O You COULD mix Ascended Soldier’s armor with Ascended Berserker’s trinkets… It’s almost the same as full knight’s, but gives more health, power, and crit damage in exchange for less armor and precision.

As an AH Guardian I’m not sure if I should even collect laurels since there’s no viable ascended set with healing

SteepledHat.1345:

It’s a bit annoying, but I was able to manage.

Don’t say that, or you’ll be “managing” when they remove even more stat combinations from the next Ascended item offerings.

Don’t worry, one day they’ll claim they’re “listening to the players” and introduce the missing stat combinations for some of the older Ascended items, after everyone has blown a few months of laurels on gear they’re not totally satisfied with.

It’ll come in a “major patch” and they’ll call it “new content,” and fanboys will vilify you if you suggest that it’s wrong in the slightest.

Have fun with that.

Czar Peter.7961:

It’s like watching a slow train wreck

Indeed, and only the force of QQ can generate enough friction to stop the train, or at least de-rail it before it hits the elevated curve in Scranton.

buki.3108:

With a full ascended knight’s set a player could obtain a large amount of attack, armor, and critical chance which would allow a player to be tanky while doing high DPS.

This makes them very susceptible to condition damage.

Czar Peter.7961:

Riselight.3695:

ANet wanted to (not sure if they still want to) introduce Ascended Weapons & Armor in the future…. Please no! If you would do the same as what we’ve seen now, everyone would run with the same gear, same stats… less or no variation at all…
Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

I agree. If ascended items were just meant to be a higher tier that allows players to play the way they want as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction to grinders demanding grind, ANet would make all exotic stat combinations available for gold and karma in PvE, and have at least one ascended item for each combination. Ascended weapons and armor are probably coming. It’s like watching a slow train wreck =)

I completely agree about the slow train wreck. It’s heart wrenching to see a game I love so much go down this path.

Abbehemoth.2471:

DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

We want more skins instead.

I only wish that they would hear us all out. I would be more then happy to have “ascended armor” with nothing more then new skins. Hell, give it an infusion slot too, but allow our current sets to be upgraded like in GW1 through a series of requirements. It would be a nice little bonus that the Ascended Armor would have an infusion slot right away, but not game breaking.

Sadly, it’s become apparent that our opinions regarding ascended items are not being herd, never mind acknowledged other then an ominous: “We wont make any more tiers this year.” or something like that.

I agree completely with the OP. There was a thread a while back speaking about this and a dev came in and said “we’ll do something about it” but never gave a time frame and never followed up with why it was released like this in the first place. Right now attribute spreads on a graph look like a triangle, with choices decreasing as your level increases. I really fail to see why this is the case, and since ANet has been mostly silent on the issue, it seems we will just have to wait and see if any of this is getting through to them…

Knight’s and etc. ascended might come in due time.

Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

Nah, I think they should be released. With that, they just need to give ascended stuff more practical ways to obtain. For example, what I think would be the best solution to the entire ascended fiasco is to simply allow upgrading from exotics to ascended with the same stat combinations (I don’t know, Gift of Ascension + Exotic gear + Elonian Wine + Philosopher’s stone). That way exotics don’t become useless when full ascended comes out, plus it makes everyone happy in the sense that it’s not RNG based.

Heijincks.9267:

Knight’s and etc. ascended might come in due time.

Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

Nah, I think they should be released. With that, they just need to give ascended stuff more practical ways to obtain. For example, what I think would be the best solution to the entire ascended fiasco is to simply allow upgrading from exotics to ascended with the same stat combinations (I don’t know, Gift of Ascension + Exotic gear + Elonian Wine + Philosopher’s stone). That way exotics don’t become useless when full ascended comes out, plus it makes everyone happy in the sense that it’s not RNG based.

As I said, this is not my point. I’m not talking about grind/trademill or whatsoever.
The point about this thread: Ascended gear hates personal builds.

Riselight.3695:

Heijincks.9267:

Knight’s and etc. ascended might come in due time.

Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

Nah, I think they should be released. With that, they just need to give ascended stuff more practical ways to obtain. For example, what I think would be the best solution to the entire ascended fiasco is to simply allow upgrading from exotics to ascended with the same stat combinations (I don’t know, Gift of Ascension + Exotic gear + Elonian Wine + Philosopher’s stone). That way exotics don’t become useless when full ascended comes out, plus it makes everyone happy in the sense that it’s not RNG based.

As I said, this is not my point. I’m not talking about grind/trademill or whatsoever.
The point about this thread: Ascended gear hates personal builds.

And I indirectly acknowledged it. I implied that “too bad such gears don’t exist now” but there’s no reason they wouldn’t in the future. Afterwards I outlined a possibility to how it could be obtained… practically as well on another note.

not only ascended item. everything is. lets have unlocked option for account when purchasing armor from dungeon vendors? i mean, how many times do i NEED to do dungeon? i would play them anyway, but the ones i like, not the ones i like armor from…

I wonder if the stat combinations on Ascended Items are not a back-door nerf to extreme builds — glass cannons and bunkers. If people want “more” stats with the Ascended items, they have to accept losing some of their “favored” stats which they can stack with exotics.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I wonder if the stat combinations on Ascended Items are not a back-door nerf to extreme builds — glass cannons and bunkers. If people want “more” stats with the Ascended items, they have to accept losing some of their “favored” stats which they can stack with exotics.

Nope quite the contrary, each iteration of ascended item so far in-game has come with both berserker and soldier stat prefixes. Soldier prefixes make for pretty tanky characters and berserker gear is the main gear set glass cannons run. If anything so far ascended gear has been funneling people into playing these play-styles over others.

Czar Peter.7961:

Riselight.3695:

ANet wanted to (not sure if they still want to) introduce Ascended Weapons & Armor in the future…. Please no! If you would do the same as what we’ve seen now, everyone would run with the same gear, same stats… less or no variation at all…
Prevent the Ascension becoming an ever greater failure than it already is, DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

I agree. If ascended items were just meant to be a higher tier that allows players to play the way they want as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction to grinders demanding grind, ANet would make all exotic stat combinations available for gold and karma in PvE, and have at least one ascended item for each combination. Ascended weapons and armor are probably coming. It’s like watching a slow train wreck =)

This is how feel about Fotm and Ascended, your thread post explained it very well thanks, it is like a slow train wreck. The game was perfect before this was implemented..

my only complaint for the current ascended gear is that it offers less for healing power than my current exotic items.. otherwise the stat variation looked perty good to me.

New and returning players probably would like ascended gear and weapons.

oversoul soldier.1742:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I wonder if the stat combinations on Ascended Items are not a back-door nerf to extreme builds — glass cannons and bunkers. If people want “more” stats with the Ascended items, they have to accept losing some of their “favored” stats which they can stack with exotics.

Nope quite the contrary, each iteration of ascended item so far in-game has come with both berserker and soldier stat prefixes. Soldier prefixes make for pretty tanky characters and berserker gear is the main gear set glass cannons run. If anything so far ascended gear has been funneling people into playing these play-styles over others.

Interesting, and thank you. I guess I can throw my tinfoil hat away.

yeah im looking forward to the armor and weapon additions but i agree they need more variation. Is it coming or is it not coming? has this been addressed yet by a dev?

the extra stat sets on current and future gear i mean

Having played Guild Wars 1 for years, I’ve been conditioned to think more in terms of balanced builds than focused builds. Many people come from games where maximizing damage to squeeze out every drop was important, because you had a tank and a healer to protect you.

You can be just as successful, even more successful in Guild Wars 2 with a balanced build. That’s why armor at the temples in Orr don’t have just one stat on every piece. You may not like it because you think putting even more points in precision or power is the only way to go. It’s not.

If you think balanced builds, which is what the game is basically designed around, you’d see why these stats are offered.

If you want to stack everything in one direction, you can do it, but I don’t believe you’ll be more effective at the end of the day than having a balanced build—in most cases anyway.

Vayne.8563:

If you think balanced builds, which is what the game is basically designed around, you’d see why these stats are offered.

But it’s the balanced builds that are missing. What we have is tank, glass cannon and Magic Find build equipments.

Abbehemoth.2471:

DO NOT introduce Ascended Weapons and/or Armor!

We want more skins instead.

This.
+1,000,000,000,000

Agree on this one.

GW2 is already quite limited in build variety, if we don’t even get all the stat combos it’s almost as shallow as spvp.

Not that there is any reason not to go full zerker until a defensive setup gives equal defense as zerker gives offense.

I don’t know what is wrong with Arena Net. The new patch also doesn’t introduce more variation of stat combinations. While I have nothing in particular against ascended gear, I am frustrated that there is not a single item that gives my desired stats. I run Carrion and cannot fail to notice the missing, at least 4, prefixes.
While I am no programmer, there is not a sound argument that can presuade me of how harder it is to make those additional jewels , than the new weapon skins, or the new TP items , or anything else.

Arena Net, PLEASE, add all stat combinations to the new tiers of gear. A lot of people don’t like the new item tier, but doing it halfway is worse.

I could agree more. This is a deal breaker for me

But if ANet added all the stats from the start, some of us wouldn’t have bought the wrong items and wouldn’t have to farm one more month of dailies to get the correct item! Thus it’d reduce the “time before full BiS” value they carefully crafted to be a big grind so it’s a no no.

Well, those who bought items with ‘wrong’ stats – it’s their own mistake. I personally save my Laurels for when there is an appropriate gear. But there isn’t!
I don’t think this reducess the time to obtain BiS gear, since we are not farming or working towards something, we are just waiting for the not most popular gear to appear into the game. This is silly.

I’m going to try and leave opinion out of this entirely and just offer some practical advice:

Do as golm above and, if the stat combination you are looking for to replace an accessory is not available, just save your laurels and wait. You will be unnecessarily gimping yourself, despite the stat boost, by just going for “whatever Ascended” over an exotic piece that perfectly fits your build.

An exception of course is made for people really into high level fractals. In that case pick a protective piece and throw some AR in there

Vayne.8563:

Having played Guild Wars 1 for years, I’ve been conditioned to think more in terms of balanced builds than focused builds. Many people come from games where maximizing damage to squeeze out every drop was important, because you had a tank and a healer to protect you.

You can be just as successful, even more successful in Guild Wars 2 with a balanced build. That’s why armor at the temples in Orr don’t have just one stat on every piece. You may not like it because you think putting even more points in precision or power is the only way to go. It’s not.

If you think balanced builds, which is what the game is basically designed around, you’d see why these stats are offered.

If you want to stack everything in one direction, you can do it, but I don’t believe you’ll be more effective at the end of the day than having a balanced build—in most cases anyway.

Min/maxing is more effective, I can’t believe anyone would suggest otherwise.

I mean, if I run a condition build, why would I want gear that doesn’t help my condition damage?

You know what, I always assumed Ascended gear was supposed to be the gear you got when you finally had “dialed in” to what you wanted to build your character around. So you don’t just go spending or grabbing them wildly . . . you figure out which one you want and get it.

Also, they have said they’re working on other stat combinations. I just chalk this up to “the bad idea of phasing them in slowly” which they’re now committed too.

Still have no idea when we will get new back items. When will we get more options for Fractal Capacitors?

We need legendary trinkets. Please ANet, deliver us