Guild Wars 2

I wonder if that captured your attention? I’m not very good at making interesting headlines. Now, please brace for a wall of text about Ascended. By the way, I’m quite fond of Ascended myself and have full Ascended+Legendary characters as well as some full Exotic characters, so I think I have some insight on the matter.
Without further ado, my suggestions:
Bumping Exotic to Ascended level stat-wise. I would feel cheated right now to wake up one day and realise my character is weaker because ascended got nerfed. If exotics got buffed? I wouldn’t be. Maybe I’m weird about it, but that’s a much more “polite” way if you want to bring exotics and ascended together. But that alone would still mean Ascended is a nonsense, useless tier of gear. So how can it be differentiated from Exotic in a not stat-based way?
Well, why not add some vanity on Ascended instead?
The possibilities to explore would be:
Not paying stones for transmutations.
Magic find bonus.
Gold find bonus.
Cheaper or free waypoints.
Better dungeon rewards.
Being able to equip on lower level alts as a scaling armor(Think Heirlooms in WoW)
Changing stats just like legendary weapons do.
Still having Agony reduction, duh. That’s already in the game.
Bonus Movement Speed for PvE(If that’s considered acceptable)
Still having extra stats in PvE(Is that acceptable? I think the majority of people only don’t like the disparity in WvW, after all everyone in PvE works together…)
In fact all of that would be way too much for mere Ascended armor, even if it had same stats as Exotic one. But of course, it’s all just mere possibilities. Let’s say Ascended Armor will have Extra Magic find and Gold find. However, if you went through the trouble of combining different Ascended Armor in one, you could enhance the bonuses while allowing you to swap stats(Combine Zerk with Cleric = can swap from Zerk to Cleric and enhanced gold/mf bonuses). Eventually, combining enough Ascended Armor in one, you could make a very cool Legendary Armor – not necessarily with its own skin, but with a great deal of bonuses from the list above and perhaps a cool smoky aura around it.
I think you’re past the wall of text now. What do you think about it? Which suggestions are epic, good, bad, terrible? Maybe you have some wisdom to share yourself? Please comment.

Why buff exotics in the first place?
The smarter and way better way would be to buff ascended stats way more so it gets a necessary gear tier and increase the material cost a little bit. With that way all problems are solved.

Ascended gear is getting nerfed?

Bomber.3872:

Why buff exotics in the first place?
The smarter and way better way would be to buff ascended stats way more so it gets a necessary gear tier and increase the material cost a little bit. With that way all problems are solved.

That’s vertical gear progression. If you want that you can go and play WoW where you can half-health people in PvP with one attack because you have maxed out gear and they only have starter PVP gear. If they don’t even have start PVP gear(Which you can only get by playing PVP.)? One-shotting time, lol.
I truly believe GW2 is about breaking the vertical progression. After all, we were promised “vanity” progression and horizontal progression, and I’m quite fond of these things. PvP and WvW should be ruled with personal skill, not with higher stats. Apart from Ascended, it’s pretty much horizontal progression around. That’s very cool, but perhaps it could be even cooler.

No.

Bomber.3872:

Why buff exotics in the first place?
The smarter and way better way would be to buff ascended stats way more so it gets a necessary gear tier and increase the material cost a little bit. With that way all problems are solved.

No, that’s creating a MUCH WORSE problem. Better to leave things alone than engage in that madness.

Wanze.8410:

No.

Yes.

Evalia.7103:

stuff.

Never going for ascended the way it is now, but I’d be fine with the people willing to travel that thousand mile road getting a few extra perks.

Evalia.7103:

Still having extra stats in PvE(Is that acceptable? I think the majority of people only don’t like the disparity in WvW, after all everyone in PvE works together…)

You underestimate the kitten of the anti-zerker meta group

Buffing exotic gear would be terrible and would require a whole rebalance of the game, considering the game is balanced for exotic level gear.

It would also leave a sour taste in many players’ mouths- ascended armour is not cheap to get and nerfing the stat boost it has (in respect to exotic) would result in discord/angry players to the point where it could harm their business.

However, I agree that ascended gear was a bad move, on the whole. It should’ve been cheaper to make than it currently is and had the same stats as exotic gear, but with the bonus of infusion slots. But at the time, A-net probably needed to add a gold-sink and some long-term goals for players who are hungry for more.

Some of the bonuses you suggested to replace stat boost would still cause the same problem as there is currently, and in most cases wouldn’t pacify the upset players who made their gear for the stat boost.

Tl;dr: changing the way an item works, especially an item of significant value, will cause a heapload of upset. Hindight’s a witch.

Well nerf zerker anyways tbh boring faceroll

So basically what you are saying is, that you think ascended is to expensive and you don’t want to get it and your solution is to nerf to exo value so you don’t want to build it anymore?

So basically what I’m saying then is, that ascended armor is currently way to cheap, everyone, even the worst only 5 min./day playing casual can get it in less than a month. You even could just buy it with some real $…

I agree that ascended armors should get more extras, for example these things you mentioned and to increase value they should get soulbound again (so you cant charswap it), but hell there is not even one reason to nerf it in it’s stats or value.

Edit: But I really hope more extra things on weapons and armors and higher stats will only introduced with legendary armor/trinkets. So ascended would then be the fast middle goal to get, until everyone would buy the legendary highend stuff.

Bomber.3872:

So basically what you are saying is, that you think ascended is to expensive and you don’t want to get it and your solution is to nerf to exo value so you don’t want to build it anymore?

So basically what I’m saying then is, that ascended armor is currently way to cheap, everyone, even the worst only 5 min./day playing casual can get it in less than a month. You even could just buy it with some real $…

I agree that ascended armors should get more extras, for example these things you mentioned and to increase value they should get soulbound again (so you cant charswap it), but hell there is not even one reason to nerf it in it’s stats or value.

Edit: But I really hope more extra things on weapons and armors and higher stats will only introduced with legendary armor/trinkets. So ascended would then be the fast middle goal to get, until everyone would buy the legendary highend stuff.

I didn’t say that.
However, I did say:
By the way, I’m quite fond of Ascended myself and have full Ascended+Legendary characters.
You’re right, Ascended armor isn’t particularly hard to acquire if you play every day. I didn’t argue with that.
I’ve also said that higher stats are bad. Magic find and other stats which do not influence combat are cool. Everyone, buy legendary highend stuff? Not everyone has 3,000+ hours. I know for myself that I do, you probably do as well, but that’s no excuse to allow us to rekt newbies in exotics in WvW. The reason why we should be stronger is solely our skill and knowledge, not the power of stats that we got through a lot of playtime.

not sure if i like the idea of making ascended = exotic, but i do like the idea of infusing other insignias into our armor allowing us to change it. I’ll always support that

There is no need to change anything , exotics don’t need to be boosted, Ascended does not need to be nerfed.
It’s a medium term goal you can choose to do if you want.

People keep throwing WvW as a reason, but A-net said WvW isn’t balanced around 1v1 combat and any two zergs would have a mix of players so it’s a moot point. (Aside from that a good exotic player would still more than likely kill a less able ascended player).

People are just whining the same as they do every time there’s a shiny toy they might not be able to get easily. There is no issue or need to change.

Why are there so many ascended threads all of a sudden? Has the player base really shifted that much to the entitled cry baby’s?

I have 3 level 80’s. One in full ascended, the other 2 are a mix of exotic and rare. Why have I not got ascended on the other 2? Because it is not needed. Once I can be bothered to buy/make the rings and trinkets to bring the other 2 into full exotics I will. But untill then, I don’t see why I need to.

If crafting ascended is not hard. I use to think that but, there are pently of step by step YouTube videos on how to get to 500 in the most cost effective way. It just takes a long time because of time gating.

Exotics should not be buffed to ascended levels. That’s absurd. There would be no point to crafting if you could do a world boss train for a few days and get everything you need. Plus, you should consider the fact that the market could shift and make exotics a lot more expensive to where everyone would start crying about market manipulation.

Try crafting ascended instead of wishing that everyone elses gear was made worthless for common drops. If anytbing, ascended should get a buff.

If I understand the OP correctly, the tl;dr is:

Ascended gear is costly and time-consuming and tedious to produce. Can’t we give it some additional non-stat bonuses to give it more oomph?

I’d like to see that.

The OP suggested things like:

• Cheaper transmutation (maybe free)
• One or more Enchanted Reward Boosts (magic find, gold find, etc).
• Reduced waypoint fees.

Evalia.7103:

Wanze.8410:

No.

Yes.

Maybe.

Ascended is really more expensive then the benefits it gives, especially when you compare the cost/stat difference between Rare and Exotic. The only reason people get it outside of fractals is simply because they can, either because they have no other goals or just to have BiS. Looks was another argument for ascended, but imo the skins for ascended(primarily weapons) looks rushed and look like filler skins, not really unique.

I think ascended should be boosted stat wise, or do similar to legendary where you can swap stat sets. To appease those who will cry balance, you can have the WvW armor scaling over scale ascended to negate the boost. So ascended would only have in impact on PVE.

I also don’t mind the idea of level scaling for alt use but really the cost vs reward for ascended does need something.

The only change to ascended armor and maybe ascended weapons that I would like to see is the ability to load multiple runes/sigils (limited number, though, like 4 different ones) and be able to switch those out when not in combat. That could add a nice difference to those items and make them even more versatile in a different way than legendary weapons.

Evalia.7103:

Not paying stones for transmutations.
Changing stats just like legendary weapons do.

Those are the only ones that make sense, but I’d rather we got legendary armour (ascended armour + a few minor things to make) and these bonuses only affected legendaries. As for buffing exotics, I don’t see a point in doing so.