Guild Wars 2

Hmm, I wonder what ANet’s plans are for Runes and Sigils when Ascended weapons/armours come out.

Currently ascended items don’t have an upgrade slot. Instead the upgrade is baked in and you get an infusion slot instead for some minor stat boosts and AR.

This is fine for trinkets, since their upgrades only offer stats anyways.

But when we get to weapons/armours, runes/sigils offer a variety of special effects.

I can’t imagine ANet making a million variations of ascended weapons/armors with each of these effects baked in.

So what can they do?

A. Ascended weapons/armors have BOTH upgrade slots and infusion slots.
—> Seems inconsistent with existing ascended items.

B. Release a wide range of new infusions with similar effects as runes/sigils.
—> Seems like a redundant waste of dev time. And more stuff to grind, yay.

C. Ascended weapons/armors can only have infusions and never runes/sigils
—> This could be interesting, there’s a tradeoff between exotic and ascended.

D. Make a million different variations of ascended gear, with different rune/sigil effects baked in. Like I said, seems unlikely.
—> Seems like a redundant waste of dev time. And more stuff to grind, yay.
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Out of all of these options C is the most interesting to me. Ascended gear will have higher stats but cannot have special effects from runes/sigils. Exotic has lower stats but has a lot more flexibility.

You forgot one more option
E. There will be only a few variations with runes that Anet feel are worth preserving. All the rest will go the way of the dodo (and the stat combinations that are already missing from ascended)

But more seriously, the most likely option is A. Apparently we didn’t get it right away only because they had a bit of a problem with implementing it, so it’s likely that once it’s solved all ascended eq will be converted into two-slot version, with ascended upgrades accessible.

IMO I think the best route is normal ascended armor with a regular slot for sigils/runes. Then allow for the option to mystic forge your ascended eat into an infused edition for 5 AR on the armor/weapon. If you think about it, 6 armor pieces infused would already give +30AR which is nearly double current AR cap. On weapons, infusions will be 10 AR on 2handed and 5pm single. This means with full ascended I hope to get around 100 AR. 30 armor60 accessories+10 weapon(s).