Guild Wars 2

So now, when we know about new ascended items (amulets) I start to worry.

ANet was stating over and over again that they want us to play in our own way, but they’re limiting our builds with new ascended items that do not get all attributes variations. It was true before they released ascended items. Exotic sets varied alot and you could made your build around it. At the moment there are 18 different attribute variations, but for example we can get backpieces in ONLY 5 possible variations – this number is overwhelming, because it clearly shows how much our choice is limited if we want to get the best stats possible.

The same thing goes with ascended amulets and rings. I was really looking forward to this update, because I was anticipating new variations of rings to be added as well. The lack of these stats hurt alot of builds. For now there are ONLY 6 attributes – Soldier, Wayfarer, Cavalier, Rabid, Berserker and Celestial. With the new amulets. that may not fit our builds, we are deprived of 4 items of our builds. Lack of Cleric, Rampager, Knight and so on, and so on clearly hits many players.

Does ANet want us to change our builds? Do they prioritise some builds over the others? Should we start to change our builds now and get accustomed to the new way of playing? And last, but not least, am I the only one who’s feeling that ANet is heading in the wrong direction?

What are your thoughts about the whole situation?

EDIT: Grammar.

Seriously? No one has any opinion at all?

I dont know. I think when they say “play your own way” they mean that they don’t want you to be forced to run Fractals if you want BiS gear.

Concerning the stats themselves? This is a quiet issue that is slowly picking up speed in the community. I could be wrong, but the stats on the ascended items look like they are all over the place.

Plus, as another thread states, there are no Knights(ppt) stats on these items. My warrior is traited for a glass cannon, but her gear props up her survivability via toughness(knights gear). Take that away and I have to redo my build because I wont be able to take one shot to the chin before going down.

nop. just want them attainable from fotm like the ring.

Well … this is true for a lot of items, especially the trinket slots. Before ascended there wasn’t even an exotic backpack for example, and there’s still no exotic breather. Across the board, stats are “missing”. As far as traits go, some stat pairs don’t always make sense.

But I don’t see that as a bad thing necessarily. It means you’ll have less options to build a min-max character, which, overall, is better for the game. Balancing and designing around min-max is very boring. In many cases, reducing options increases creativity. The most unimaginative build in the game is power/crit%/critdmg.

I think it’s kittened up. No p/p/t gear? Only +healing is on the + all stats version???

They already lack customization by not having any ability to change the 2nd 3set of stats; with epic jewelry I can slot in a gem to tweak the stats. They at least need to give us the basic gear stats that we’ve been able to craft/obtain since level 55… That’s not min-maxing. That’s wanting our normal choices.

Add in the non sequitur stuff later… like the pwr/pre/crit + pwr/crit/vit later.

Give us our normal gear choices back.

cesmode.4257:

Plus, as another thread states, there are no Knights(ppt) stats on these items. My warrior is traited for a glass cannon, but her gear props up her survivability via toughness(knights gear). Take that away and I have to redo my build because I wont be able to take one shot to the chin before going down.

That’s my main point. We are losing some stats, because of the lack of variety in ascended items. I was really excited to see “30 Ascended Amulets to choose from”, but to be honest there’s much less choice. Since every stat gets Utility, Offensive and Defensive variation there’s only 10 or so to choose from. And since we use only 1 amulet those variations are useless.

marnick.4305:

Well … this is true for a lot of items, especially the trinket slots. Before ascended there wasn’t even an exotic backpack for example, and there’s still no exotic breather. Across the board, stats are “missing”. As far as traits go, some stat pairs don’t always make sense.

But I don’t see that as a bad thing necessarily. It means you’ll have less options to build a min-max character, which, overall, is better for the game. Balancing and designing around min-max is very boring. In many cases, reducing options increases creativity.

While I agree with you to some extent, you wrote that the game is still lacking some cases, and that’s the point of this topic

Yes, I will collect Laurels and the such, but I see ZERO ascended gear I like/can use with my builds. There’s no point in buying what I won’t use. Exotic will be it for me, until they add more stats combinations (they have LOTS of stats combinations, and some odd at that, which is fine; but just not the ones I need, which were shipped for the normal stuff from day one.)

The lack of ways of acquiring bagpacks is also alarming. I still have a green bagpack because no currently available one fits my playstyle (I could use Magi, but I “need” a Cleric version).

Not complaining that much, but rather disappointed at the lack of variety. Makes me ignore Ascended gear yet once more, because I still feel it’s an unfinished concept (no offense to developers-they probably agree.)

Star Ace.5207:

Yes, I will collect Laurels and the such, but I see ZERO ascended gear I like/can use with my builds. There’s no point in buying what I won’t use. Exotic will be it for me, until they add more stats combinations (they have LOTS of stats combinations, and some odd at that, which is fine; but just not the ones I need, which were shipped for the normal stuff from day one.)

The lack of ways of acquiring bagpacks is also alarming. I still have a green bagpack because no currently available one fits my playstyle (I could use Magi, but I “need” a Cleric version).

Not complaining that much, but rather disappointed at the lack of variety. Makes me ignore Ascended gear yet once more, because I still feel it’s an unfinished concept (no offense to developers-they probably agree.)

And the worst part about this is that while exotics were easy to obtain, it’s much harder to equip new ascended amulets for more than one character. It’s where the real grind kicks off. “You want new amulet? Log in everyday for the month or do it for 20 days and finish monthly achievement as well”. In my opinion, ANet didn’t really think it through.

I am kinda annoyed…this is really a problem to my eyes…i have a guardian…built tank/support and i love to play this way…many dungeon runs becomes much easier just because of me being here. So i’m just so much annoyed by the fact that there isn’t even ONE set with healing power ! ( ye, i know there’s the celestial attribute,but…it’s a totally useless set, you just get medriocre in everything ).
The hell Anet ? you want us to play as YOU wants ? we all know that tough and vit are totally useless against agony, since it ll tear 1/8 of your life anyway, but then…bam ! here comes the healing power ! remove me half life or so with agony ? np ,refilled 3 sec later or even less…so…why we do not put it as an ascended item ? that way tank/support→ gtfo.
But…if you didn’t meant to do that, please put other sets so that ppl could actually enjoy fractal instead of having to do new characters or change build just for it…you can’t run pure dps…you get shotted…ok …you can’t run pure tank/support…you get shotted by agony…
(and talk about power/vit/tough set pls, that isn’t tank, nor will never properly tank that’s just a meatwall destined to fall sooner or later, thus making guard useless considering their low base vit, compared to warriors)

I just wanted to post exactly the same topic.

I was really looking for cleric ascended items, but nope…

all my support builds revolve around soldier armor and cleric jewelry…

now if I want to advance in fractals I have to go for soldier ascended jewelry which forces me to craft few more full sets of cleric exotic armors…. which is unfair comparing to berzerker or magic find (why there is magic find ascended jewelry and not healing power? are you hinting us something?)

I made a couple of posts about this already. Precision or healing primary stat characters are stuck with no direct upgrade with every ascended realease and devs have not stated why.

Also people are missing some of the familiar exotic stat combinations like knight, cleric, carrion and rampager.

Personally this is a fair sized problem for 2 of my characters.

Braghez.7529:

I am kinda annoyed…this is really a problem to my eyes…i have a guardian…built tank/support and i love to play this way…many dungeon runs becomes much easier just because of me being here. So i’m just so much annoyed by the fact that there isn’t even ONE set with healing power ! ( ye, i know there’s the celestial attribute,but…it’s a totally useless set, you just get medriocre in everything ).

I know what you feel. It’s the same with me. I’ve built a Guardian with max. healing stats to help my guild or PUG do the dungeons and now I cannot be as good as I was, because I’m losing stats to get agony resist (without which I’d be useless, because dead support is no support at all).

Sadly, support players have met Dark Age of GW2 and I don’t think they will easily overcome these obstacles.

Marxo.3829:

I made a couple of posts about this already. Precision or healing primary stat characters are stuck with no direct upgrade with every ascended realease and devs have not stated why.

Also people are missing some of the familiar exotic stat combinations like knight, cleric, carrion and rampager.

Personally this is a fair sized problem for 2 of my characters.

Those four stats are not the only ones. Look at what we were able to get before and what we can get now. It’s wrong on so many levels of understanding.

It’s just incomplete-a work in progress. Sad but true. But as I said, it makes me see no point in acquiring any current available gear, because it doesn’t apply to my builds and playstyle. We were given an Ascended gear teaser of sorts-though it doesn’t really make sense why would they release odd stat combinations before the common ones that people have used for a long while?

Star Ace.5207:

It’s just incomplete-a work in progress. Sad but true. But as I said, it makes me see no point in acquiring any current available gear, because it doesn’t apply to my builds and playstyle. We were given an Ascended gear teaser of sorts-though it doesn’t really make sense why would they release odd stat combinations before the common ones that people have used for a long while?

I don’t even know what to think about it. FotM is here since the mid-November and it’s almost February. There weren’t any significant changes to the last update, which made everything worse.

Still no knight’s gear

This is unbelievable.

where are they? why you give everybody everything and nothig to healers?
where def amulets? with tof/power/vit?
you said that we can play everybody if we want. I want play tank and healer.
I returned 10 men from my gild in that game, they ask me this questions. I dont know what to say.
Guys, you said, kitten men you promised. Your words means nothing?

The current amulets simply coincide with the rings that were introduced with the fractals. When they create additional ways to obtain ascended gear, it’s likely that we’ll get the other combinations of stats. Nevertheless, for the time being, it is frustrating that none of this new, shiny gear is any good for my build (carrion/rampager gear). It only discourages people from even trying to obtain the gear (which means less people play fractals and do dailies), and if people really want to wear ascended gear over exotic, it makes even less builds viable.

But for now I’m going to be patient and hope that further stats are released with the upcoming expansions in February and March. One thing is clear- if this is the extent of stat possibilities for ascended gear, you can kiss some builds goodbye because they won’t be able to compete on the same scale as others that have ascended available.

Thorquist.8126:

Those four stats are not the only ones. Look at what we were able to get before and what we can get now. It’s wrong on so many levels of understanding.

I suspected there were even more. Prec and healing major is mostly what I’m aware of as that affects my characters. It’s even worse than I thought :/

Anet is just throwing random stuff that they don’t take the time to properly think, and properly test. I wonder if there is at least one person at Anet who has a correct general idea of how the game is right now, of what the problems are, of what the players want and need. Frankly, they look like amateurs.

But for now I’m going to be patient and hope that further stats are released with the upcoming expansions in February and March.

We waited since FOTM. Nothing going to change unless we speak up, they`d just release new pieces of gear with the same nonsence stats variants.

Yeah- you’re right. We probably shouldn’t “be patient” anymore, but what can we do? People were already frustrated about this exact issue 2 months ago and nothing has changed.

Marxo.3829:

Also people are missing some of the familiar exotic stat combinations like knight, cleric, carrion and rampager.

This makes me wonder if it’s intentional, like they’re trying to discourage min/max in favor of making the choice between more power OR more precision OR toughness, etc.

Perhaps they’re figuring sub-optimal choices make for interesting game play?

Or perhaps they’re leaving the main stat combos for exotics, so that the ascended gear isn’t a hard and fast replacement for an optimized exotic build. This makes more sense.

People were already frustrated about this exact issue 2 months ago and nothing has changed.

Arena said they`d add more stuff and we believed them and waited. Now it is clearly a trend and no use to wait more. I never bothered with FOTM gear because I expected normal stats in the big update.

Perhaps they’re figuring sub-optimal choices make for interesting game play?

If Berserker is sub-optimal I don`t see how Knights or Clerics is not. Glass-cannon builds get even more powerfull, whereas all remotely supportive builds get gimped.

Mackdose.6504:

Or perhaps they’re leaving the main stat combos for exotics, so that the ascended gear isn’t a hard and fast replacement for an optimized exotic build.

Except they did make Berserker version, which runs against any possible reasons i can think of to not include knight (etc.) sets. So, it seems that at least some optimized builds are perfectly okay, while other builds are not for unfathomable reasons.

Mackdose.6504:

Marxo.3829:

Also people are missing some of the familiar exotic stat combinations like knight, cleric, carrion and rampager.

This makes me wonder if it’s intentional, like they’re trying to discourage min/max in favor of making the choice between more power OR more precision OR toughness, etc.

Perhaps they’re figuring sub-optimal choices make for interesting game play?

Or perhaps they’re leaving the main stat combos for exotics, so that the ascended gear isn’t a hard and fast replacement for an optimized exotic build. This makes more sense.

Maybe it is intentional or maybe not. The issue still remains and it needs to be pointed out to ANet. Glass cannons and soldier builds are still supported, because they get ascended items.

ANet needs our feedback, because without it there won’t be any changes!

Thank you for the link Thorquist.

Just lending my voice to this thread, the noticeable lack of ascended items in terms of Knight’s jewellery and various others, is peculiar and worsened by the fact we’ve had no official clarification on whether we should “make do” or wait for additional items.

Any player, hardcore or otherwise wanting specific ascended pieces has to work extremely hard and put vast amounts of time to receive the piece they want, so naturally you can see why I, and others are hesitant on putting weeks of work into substandard jewellery to “fill the void”.

I will say this again for emphasis: Please can we have official clarification on knight’s (and other) ascended jewellery.

Thanks,
Achilles.

I’m also trying to justify it Mackdose, and you came up with some interesting ideas. But honestly, I don’t think they’re putting much thought into it unless it’s a strategy to give people a greater incentive to play future material. Some of these stat combos make absolutely no sense. And considering they implement new gear that doesn’t even work (giver’s) and then don’t bother to change it, I sometimes wonder if they know what the hell they’re even doing when it comes to gear stats.

I sometimes wonder if they know what the hell they’re even doing sometimes when it comes to gear stats.

Berserker and Soldiers. Sounds a lot like WvW main stats. Guess most testers and devs just don`t bother with anything but “endgame” power-builds for WvW. Also the lack of balance for certain classes points to the fact that devs don`t bother with anything they don`t play themselves either…

Why isnt Anet responing to this?
I like to hear their point of view

Full glass cannon or full tank for the way I guess. Hybrids get the shaft as usual. Cavalier is the only one that is remotely useful for me, but crit damage is useless without the precision. Don’t know why they can’t put Knight and Valkyrie stats to ascended items.

Why isnt Anet responing to this?
I like to hear their point of view

Hah, we waited for over a month for an answer on loot drop issue and got shafted anyway. Don`t get your hopes up.

I don’t think the game has ever favored easy switching of builds. Switching from condition (carrior) to crit (beserker), for example, can cost around 40 gold in new equipment.

I can’t believe there’s no Knight’s or Valkyrie items. Thieves get harder hitting back stabs with their ascended berserker’s gear and everyone else get’s screwed.

Seriously? Come on….

Face it, ANet want the defensive side to rest on the player rather than character numbers. As such, things will benefit dodge, block and interrupt over heal and passive damage reduction.

Well, let them say it to my face then.
If that is the direction the game is taking from now on there is no point in playing certain classes. Thief can actively avoid damage as much as a guardian, if not better (aegis only blocks one attack while extra dodge/stealth can avoid indefinite number of them), but will deal way, WAY more damage.

That extra 10 AR will be great for fractals. But it sucks having to spend a months worth of Laurels on it even though it doesn’t fit you build, but you need the AR.

I’d like to hear official statement regarding this as well, but like someone above wrote ’don’t get your hopes up’. It’s not some minor issue, because it directly concerns our endgame and yet it wasn’t discussed by them so far.

I only hope this feedback will force some reaction to the issue.

Zerbo.5381:

I’m also trying to justify it Mackdose, and you came up with some interesting ideas. But honestly, I don’t think they’re putting much thought into it unless it’s a strategy to give people a greater incentive to play future material. Some of these stat combos make absolutely no sense. And considering they implement new gear that doesn’t even work (giver’s) and then don’t bother to change it, I sometimes wonder if they know what the hell they’re even doing when it comes to gear stats.

Not trying to justify it per se, I’m just trying to wrap my head around where this falls in the design of the game.

What are they trying to encourage/discourage?
Does this have larger implications for future content?
Are they trying to add value without removing the value of existing pieces/builds/gameplay?
What are these changes meant to solve/mitigate/improve?

I try to look at changes through that lens.

That is exactly why we need a dev to answer. None of these questions have any logical or consistent replies from a player`s PoV.

I opened a similar thread regarding the lack of Knight’s gear yesterday but am noticing that this one is more general and better worded so I’ll let that other one die and voice my opinion here.

Seems like Arenanet doesn’t like these combinations and while the lack of + healing power might be understandable (but imo not justifiable) as they don’t want to have dedicated healers, I really cannot wrap my head around Knight’s as it’s not even a min-maxing combo ( like their beloved Berserker is ). What is wrong in building a middle-ground tanky dps that can take decent punishment and deal decent damage? Soldier doesn’t cut it because it sacrifices too much damage and crit chance is really important for many traits/sigils ( Guardian Crithammer, for example ).

If a dev could explain me the reasoning behind these changes I’d be very happy.

Wolfheart.1938:

I opened a similar thread regarding the lack of Knight’s gear yesterday but am noticing that this one is more general and better worded so I’ll let that other one die and voice my opinion here.

Seems like Arenanet doesn’t like these combinations and while the lack of + healing power might be understandable (but imo not justifiable) as they don’t want to have dedicated healers, I really cannot wrap my head around Knight’s as it’s not even a min-maxing combo ( like they beloved Berserker is ).

Excatly, is not justifiable at all, like many other things.
If they dont want player with a full heal chars (i dont like to be supportive, but if someone love that kind of role, why have him to be stopped?), why they have created healing traitlines and the healing stat?
Also the lack of knight ascended option is pretty heavy.

The best thing would be, to add all exotic stat-combos (+Knight, i mean, this istn available yet for exotic) to the ascended gear. This would make the variaty much more better and, I think something around 90% of all players very happy

I don’t think Anet fully realized the can of worms they were opening when they added vertical progression to the game. It’s generally defended on the basis of its being insignificant. But, why would you add an insignificant element to a game? Actually, the grinders are beginning to notice that the difference is not worth the effort of their grinding and I’ve noticed threads on this.

It’s easy for me as I will not be getting any ascended gear. I didn’t buy GW2 for a gear grind and won’t be grinding out the tiers—so, no ascended gear for me. I do realize there will come a point where I can no longer play the game due to the ever increasing power level of the game. At that point I will simply quit playing. It is sad as I enjoy playing GW2. I’m actually waiting for a game like the one described in the manifesto. It will be glorious and I’m sure well worth the wait.

Ganzo.5079:

Wolfheart.1938:

I opened a similar thread regarding the lack of Knight’s gear yesterday but am noticing that this one is more general and better worded so I’ll let that other one die and voice my opinion here.

Seems like Arenanet doesn’t like these combinations and while the lack of + healing power might be understandable (but imo not justifiable) as they don’t want to have dedicated healers, I really cannot wrap my head around Knight’s as it’s not even a min-maxing combo ( like they beloved Berserker is ).

Excatly, is not justifiable at all, like many other things.
If they dont want player with a full heal chars (i dont like to be supportive, but if someone love that kind of role, why have him to be stopped?), why they have created healing traitlines and the healing stat?
Also the lack of knight ascended option is pretty heavy.

To be honest, I really doubt that they don’t want to encourage the Healing Power (etc.) stat(s). My theory is the usual-it’s a wholly incomplete game mechanic, but one of the most popular stats IS Berserker’s and Soldier’s. Therefore, they went ahead with that alongside some odd stats combos for the sakes of variety-but neglecting the “basic” stat combos for some inexplicable reason other than it being a work-in-progress (which is why I consider current Ascended gear a teaser of what’s to come-how hard is it to code the other “basic” stat combinations, though?)

Of course, it doesn’t make sense, because what use is any gear you won’t use? It being available won’t make some players (like many of us) acquire something we have no use for. IMHO, they should have added the “normal” stat combinations first, and only THEN the odd ones for those who want/prefer something else not in the “basic” nomenclature sets.

What I find absolutely disgusting about all of this is the sheer amount of GRIND associated with getting just ONE amulet. You need to at LEAST complete 1 monthly and 20 dailies in order to get ONE amulet. Why is there a need for such an atrocious amount of grinding? What if we have many characters on our account and want to gear all of them in ascended amulets? What if we have multiple specs that we like to switch between from? I only have two characters at level 80 but I like to play them in different ways…does that mean I have to grind dailies and monthlies for SIX months (2 characters, 3 playstyles per character) just to give them their associated amulets?!?! That is DEFINITELY a REPULSIVE NUMBER.

What I fail to understand is why there was a patch to make dungeon grinding easier (pre patch, you would only receive 30 tokens for the daily…to 60 tokens for the daily after the patch) yet the grind associated with amulets is reflective of the PRE-PATCH DUNGEON fix? This is totally baffling.

The enormous limitation in stat combinations is genuinely troubling. At first, I thought it was some sort of oversight for the rings, but it seems like it’s intentional that only 10 stats — none with meaningful healing power — are supposed to be available.

KinkyPotato.4219:

What I find absolutely disgusting about all of this is the sheer amount of GRIND associated with getting just ONE amulet. You need to at LEAST complete 1 monthly and 20 dailies in order to get ONE amulet. Why is there a need for such an atrocious amount of grinding? What if we have many characters on our account and want to gear all of them in ascended amulets? What if we have multiple specs that we like to switch between from? I only have two characters at level 80 but I like to play them in different ways…does that mean I have to grind dailies and monthlies for SIX months (2 characters, 3 playstyles per character) just to give them their associated amulets?!?! That is DEFINITELY a REPULSIVE NUMBER.

What I fail to understand is why there was a patch to make dungeon grinding easier (pre patch, you would only receive 30 tokens for the daily…to 60 tokens for the daily after the patch) yet the grind associated with amulets is reflective of the PRE-PATCH DUNGEON fix? This is totally baffling.

Maybe there’s a possibility of gaining them in higher fractals as the rings are. If not, then there’s another issue to be adressed apart from tha lack of many stats combinations.

My two cents on all of this is that limited choice in ascended gear sets will cause stagnation in game. At this time more and more people are jumping in droves to play as either glass cannon or bunker builds. The introduction of ascended gear that limits other play-styles and caters to these play-styles only compounds the issue.

Also people who state that ascended gear is only marginally better don’t realize that everyone, they included, would take an advantage no matter how marginal it is. Let me ask you if you play a glass cannon play-style and I offered you the choice of an exotic berserker ring or an ascended berserk ring (with marginal stat improvement over the exotic ring) which would you take? You see my point every person in the world would take the ascended ring because no matter how marginal the benefit it still is a benefit, it certainly doesn’t hurt. The question then becomes why do some specific play-styles get this marginal benefit while others do not?

To those arguing that introducing all possible stat sets as ascended items would lead to game imbalance, if this is the case why were ascended items even introduced to begin with? Is Anet that unaware of this issue, and does this never come into discussion when they devise the idea to create a higher tier of item such as the ascended items? Also if this is the case why are these items allowed to be used in competitive portions of the game such as WvW? Finally if these items only offer marginal benefit in comparison to exotic gear of the same stat setup how could introducing all stat setups of ascended gear lead to game-breaking balance issues? All these arguments about why these other stat sets have been excluded from the ascended gear list is just hyperbole as no one knows the reasoning behind why Anet did what they did. Many are just waiting for an explanation from Anet into why they excluded these certain sets.

The most troubling part about this all is that ascended items do not even represent the full evolution tier of gear as Anet has stated that gear above ascended will come in to the game at a later date. If things continue as they are now some play-styles will see very little play time as they’re left behind due to tier progression. I mean who will use a play-style that is gimped because the best gear/accessories they can get are two tiers lower than the highest tier items in game. I’m not saying this what will happen but some insight from Anet on all of this would be great.

Well, it seems that the topic will be overlooked as many others that have some kind of criticism/pointing out something wrong, so the only option for me is to left this question unanswered.