Guild Wars 2

Beating a dead horse? Maybe. Still, I wanted to bring it up, because raids are getting a handful of dislike threads.

Of course the forums are not the majority in any way. Yes, raids are content for the more dedicated people.

Ascended equipment is starting to become more and more a requirement for a lot of things, and it’s really not helping the game at all. With such a small stat increase, you would wonder why players are starting to limit each other, but it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade.

The limitation doesn’t need to be there. Stopping players to participate because they don’t have full ascended equipment. I know that even if ascended equipment was removed, or even easier to get (exotic equivalent easy to get) players would still try to limit others, but even less so if players were on an equal ground of power. As well as the “need” of different armour sets with different stats is taking its toll, and almost feel impossible to get when you are being told it too needs to be ascended quality.

Raids appears to become bigger and bigger with more time put into it, interesting lore and a lot of gameplay hours, that a lot of people are missing out on because they are not on equal gear ground.

I think it’s too late to remove ascended equipment, it’s just not possible in this state. The only thing they can do is to make it far much easier to get hold of than it is at the moment.

How is it hard to get hold of ascended equipment?
Also not sure why you think exotic is easy to get.
Also not sure why you think you can’t raid in exotics.

Getting ascended equipment is fairly easy already. Once you have maxed your crafting disciplines, a player with enough free time can craft an ascended piece in 2 days (possibly even one day) by simply farming SW. A more casual player can easily craft one in 8 or 9 days (by simply farming the mats to craft deldrimor ingots / spiritwood / etc, which doesn’t take too long every day).

Sure, you have between 7 and 10 pieces of equipment (not counting the trinkets), so it adds up. But really, there are not many games out there where you can get the best possible piece of equipment in 2 days. Most of the time, it involves days and days of farming in some silly dungeon and relying on the RNG.

To me, ascended equipment have achieved the balance between having a reasonably obtainable item and giving a semi long term goal to players. They do bring something beyond the stats: they give something to do to the players, and even though it’s a paradox, especially to the players who don’t care about dungeons / raids and therefore don’t have lots to do in PvE.

One of the major problems with the Raid, is players that want to raid without having crossed the previous difficulty parts of the game. It’s mind-boggling how players want to join a raid team while they haven’t finished Arah or done any Fractals above 20… And if they did, there woudn’t be an issue with Ascended (or not having the proper gear).

You can’t go from open world pve farming to raiding directly. Unless you are good enough already. For the vast majority of players that’s not true, they should do the 5-man content first, before going for 10-man content.

Maybe if they added Agony in the Raid, something like 100 AR needed to progress would solve this… but it would feel horrible and like a needless gate. It’s better if the playerbase understand the natural progression of challenge themselves.

as you properly noted “it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade”

people will always be kittening about something, be it gear, title or achievement points

even if all of that will be removed all together elitists or simply losers who are afraid of failing something will find something new to use as an artificial bar for new players

Farzo.8410:

Ascended equipment is starting to become more and more a requirement for a lot of things, and it’s really not helping the game at all.

I would argue that not really. There is only 2 contents that need ascended.
1) Fractal level 84. And frankly, those level you only do 1 times because they are boring, don’t give more reward and are super long. You can do the max daily everyday without a ascended gear. If you want to do level 85 to 100 then you are ready to put enough time into the game that you are an hardcore player now.

2) Raid. It doesn’t need ascended gear, plenty of people have shown that it’s possible to do it in full exotic. That said, I hate when people say just that. Even if that’s true, it was highly skilled, experienced crew that did that. VG and Slothazor in exotic for the average squad or pug squad? Ya no problem. For Gorseval or Sabetha not so much. The amount of squad that are able to do that is very small and most of them were able to practice in ascended before.

So you only have 2 contents that need ascended. Raid and Fractal 84+ which are both hardcore content. No problem with that.

That said, there is some problem with ascended gear. Mostly that you only have very few source and that they are harder to get for the average player than before. With HoT the price of ascended material sky-rocketed and now it take about 550 gold to craft a full armor. While in fractal the level 51+ daily is about the same rate of ascended as the old level 50, there is only 1 daily as before you could have decent chance of getting ascended in level 20, 30 and 40. Meaning, that players slowly climbing the fractal would receive some ascended gear by the time they reach level 50, which isn’t the case anymore. The amount of ascended you receive in WvW is pathetic and there is no ascended source in HoT or in Open world (except some one time achievement), which is probably where most of the player base are.

It’s a simple attempt to measure the likelihood of success when taking someone completely unknown. Is it a good way? No. Is there a better way? Not really.

But if someone has equipped his character in full Ascended, chances are they are either dedicated enough or played the game long enough to have a basic grasp of things.

‘But people in full Ascended can still be bad and someone in all greens can be good!’ Yes, there will always be those individuals that defy this rule of thumb, but since there is no other way (and raids/pugging is time consuming as it is), people will do that.

There is also a simple solution to those people who say that the LFGs are too harsh and have ludicrous requirements. One that they often seem to ignore. Make your own. Make your own LFG without requirements and try to make a run like that. Literally nothing is stopping you. If the people disliking the ‘elitism’ (debatable) are really that numerous as they make it seem to be then finding a group shouldn’t be a problem. Unless of course those people seek to be carried be better and dedicated groups and simply rant that it’s not that easy for them. Then of course there’s the other side that asks for high demands in their groups while being an utter newbie themselves, hoping to get carried by better players joining them, but that’s about people pretending, not about the system in general.

As for the availability, I feel it’s okayish. Ascended Mats skyrocketed in price ever since the Precursor Collections, and the places where you can drop them then to have low droprates. But then again those sets are account bound these days and as such the investment is very well worth it and considering you can often gear up 2-3 classes at once doing so the effort is in line.

So, make your own groups for the things you want to do without requirements if you find it so awful and hard to find someone. Or invest in Ascended Gear. As you said it yourself, people will always look for things to measure unknown factors against. AP are a popular way too, while being equally if not more vague and at times meaningless. But chances are the player with 90 AP will be worse than the one with 8000, and that’s good enough a chance for most people.

In fairness I’m at best a casual, and I’ve got everything ascended – all 16 items.
I’m just messing around throwing some other bits and pieces on another toon now just in case I fancy a change. I’ve never played GW1 and only got the game on HoT release.

It’s really not that hard to get ascended gear as others have said above – although weapons I’ve relied on drops (yes, I’ve been a little lucky there) lol

Farzo.8410:

Ascended equipment is starting to become more and more a requirement for a lot of things, and it’s really not helping the game at all. With such a small stat increase, you would wonder why players are starting to limit each other, but it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade.

This is false.

In the major affix for tri-stat across all equipment there is an upgrade difference of 92 between exotic and ascended. This sounds small but let’s take power (zerker) and ignore everything else by setting it to 1 using the difference.

Damage = 1 * 92 * 1 / 1

Let’s add some additive ( for ease of explanation ) standard damage buffs, 10% for runes (scholar), 15% for sigils (night + force) to our 92.

92 * 1.25 = 115

Now let’s add a skill specific effect, say weapon does 10% more damage overall:

115 * 1.1 = 126.5

Now let’s do a critical hit without considering ferocity:

126.5 * 1.5 = 189.75

Now let’s kitten minor values and presume ferocity follows the same schedule of 961 – 899 = 62 / 15 for ferocity = 4.13 rounded two decimals. Let’s adjust our critical hit:

126.5 * 1.5413 = 194.97 rounded two decimals.

So these are just the differences in numbers and presuming everything is correct this number has grown substantially from the 92 “meager points” over doubling in effectiveness just from the nature of coherence with the other numbers. I am almost positive that damage increases are not additive when not from the same source though I set it that way and I purposefully did not add the damage or ferocity from the scholar runes to prove the point.

Basically these numbers grow very, very quickly due to their relationships with one another.

DGraves. When people usually say that ‘’it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade’’, they are usually only talking about ascended armor, not full ascended vs full exotic.

Mostly because, trinket are easy to get and weapons are important and not that hard to get (lot of source and don’t cost that much crafting). The problem is when you talk about ascended vs exotic armor, because you only get 52 points of stats total in difference for a price tag of 550 gold.

I rarely see people complain about ascended weapons and trinkets. People complain about armor because they are like several times costlier than the rest and give near no upgrade in stats.

Sir Mad.1092:

Getting ascended equipment is fairly easy already. Once you have maxed your crafting disciplines, a player with enough free time can craft an ascended piece in 2 days (possibly even one day) by simply farming SW. A more casual player can easily craft one in 8 or 9 days (by simply farming the mats to craft deldrimor ingots / spiritwood / etc, which doesn’t take too long every day).

I think you are being a bit optimistic. An ascended item was intended as a not so rich person’s Legendary. And yes, you can make one Deldrimor steel ingot a day, and spiritwood plank.

BUT only one, After that you have to pay on the TP. A sword is likely to take you 9 days of farming.

The same cannot be said for cloth and leather, it is far more difficult to obtain these as they have to be mostly obtained through salvaging drops. Because of an issue early in the game, well before they had even thought of ascended stuff, anet made it so you would get mostly drops based on your character level, not the level of the area you were in. This madkes it much harder for people to obtain lower level cloth and leather than wood and metals.

Now I’m sure you would claim you could farm the mats for a piece of Damask in one day, go and try it. You would need 36 bolts of Damask for a light armor set. Then you need leather too. That could mean a couple of months hard farming, probably far more for a ‘casual player’.

Armor and weapon chests are already available in Raids after you manage to kill the Vale Guardian once, although you do need to spend your reward tokens for them. Anet are supposedly working on other options for obtaining them too.

The other side of this is that, except for raids and fractals, there is really no need to have ascended armor or weapons. In Fractals you only need them for the Agony Resist slots.

@ Serious. If you craft everything. It will cost you 533 gold to craft an heavy ascended armor. That’s between 55 and 27 hours of farming. Not really bad if you ask me. Just take your time and slowly craft it one piece by piece. Even a casual can craft one piece each week or so.

Ascended was as unneeded as stats in general. It fits the more compromised mainstream MMO GW2 is compared to GW1.

I find ascended gear motivates me to play but not to the extent that I optimally grind for mats.

Thaddeus.4891:

DGraves. When people usually say that ‘’it’s more of a status upgrade than a stats upgrade’’, they are usually only talking about ascended armor, not full ascended vs full exotic.

Mostly because, trinket are easy to get and weapons are important and not that hard to get (lot of source and don’t cost that much crafting). The problem is when you talk about ascended vs exotic armor, because you only get 52 points of stats total in difference for a price tag of 550 gold.

I rarely see people complain about ascended weapons and trinkets. People complain about armor because they are like several times costlier than the rest and give near no upgrade in stats.

It isn’t so much the base (the 52) as the effect ( the 200+% increase to that 52 ) that I mean to emphasize. The difference when all is said and done tends to be larger than we assume because if the difference between it all is 92 and armor makes up 52 of that …

It’s + 60 defence rating compared to heavy exotic armors (+4.95%), + 54 DR for medium armors, and + 47 DR for light armors.

As for the stats, it’s +47 points compared to exotic 3 bonuses armors, and +60 points compared to exotic 4 bonuses armors. And you can add another 30 points from infusions.

I do believe as well you can complete high end content in exotic gear, but it’s starting to add up. If I take my thief’s ascended Marauder armor for instance, it gives me an extra 410 hp (and that’s just a secondary stat), which is HUGE when you only have 11,645 base HP.

Dgraves didnt even get the math right. Again. Full ascended zerker gear gives you a total of 2382 power, while full exotic gives you 2138, a difference of roughly 244 power. With an engineer using a rifle as an example, here’s the math:

weapon damage: 1101 (midpoint/exotic) & 1150 (midpoint/ascended)
power: 2138 exotic & 2382 ascended
skill coefficent: 0.65 (hipshot AA)
armor: 2064 med armor target, exotic, zerker

Damage from exotic weapon: (1101*2138*0.65)/2064=~741 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from exotic weapon (with ascended stats): (1101*2382*0.65)/2064=~825 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from ascended weapon: (1150*2382*0.65)/2064=~862 avg damage (noncritical)

And because you cant use an exotic weapon and get ascended stats out of it, the difference ends up being 862 vs 741, which ends up being around a 16% damage increase overall before account for other stats..

edit: setting the other variables in the damage calcuation to 1 gives you a seriously wrong result when we’re talking about practical results.

Edit: you know what? it’s not that bad. I still don’t like it at all and at very least I hope they stop time gating crafting but I was being a bit harsh.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Dgraves didnt even get the math right. Again. Full ascended zerker gear gives you a total of 2382 power, while full exotic gives you 2138, a difference of roughly 244 power. With an engineer using a rifle as an example, here’s the math:

weapon damage: 1101 (midpoint/exotic) & 1150 (midpoint/ascended)
power: 2138 exotic & 2382 ascended
skill coefficent: 0.65 (hipshot AA)
armor: 2064 med armor target, exotic, zerker

Damage from exotic weapon: (1101*2138*0.65)/2064=~741 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from exotic weapon (with ascended stats): (1101*2382*0.65)/2064=~825 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from ascended weapon: (1150*2382*0.65)/2064=~862 avg damage (noncritical)

And because you cant use an exotic weapon and get ascended stats out of it, the difference ends up being 862 vs 741, which ends up being around a 16% damage increase overall before account for other stats..

edit: setting the other variables in the damage calcuation to 1 gives you a seriously wrong result when we’re talking about practical results.

You should correct this then:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment

That’s where I got the numbers from.

Edit: Oh, nevermind, you are trying to do something entirely different.

Edit 2: Actually, you’re accidentally confirming my point. A math journey:

First let’s reverse out defense by setting it to 1.

2382 * 1150 * .65 = 1780545
2138 * 1150 * .65 = 1530060

1780545 / 1530060 = .163709 or 16%

We don’t need defense.

Let’s next terminate the coefficients:

( 2382 * 1150 *1 ) / 1 = 2739300

( 2138 * 1101 * 1 ) / 1 = 2353938

Hopefully everyone knows I don’t have to divide by one but I am for clarity because apparently ... you don’t? Anyway, 2739300 / 2353938 = .163709 or 16% so the coefficent doesn’t matter.

Next let’s take one of two routes to terminate the weapon power. We can condense weapon range into power through converting it by multiplying them together, so it’s just the 2381 * 1150 = Effective Power and the same for the exotic as 2138 * 1101 for Effecive Power which will keep us at the ratio of 16% (hooray?) or, my favorite method, just divide them out and change the ratio:

2739300 / 1150 = 2382; 2353938 / 1101 = 2138

The two over one another is 2382 / 2138 = .114125 or 11%

Now that weapon power, coefficient, and defense have been removed we still have to deal with base power because it’s uniform to both, so we subtract 1,000 from each and I am not going to show work on this step but will come out with a ratio:

1382 / 1138 = ... Uh oh. Something is wrong.

Exotic major gives at _least_ 1,200, that I know, even if 1,289 from the wiki is wrong, so that difference of 244 can’t be correct. Furthermore we know that gear stats go up approximately 5% each tier, but 1382 - 1138 = 244 and 244 is 5% of 4880. But you know what 1289 * 1.05 is? 1353. That’s quite a bit closer to our number 1389 than 4,880.

Either that or we’ve been duped and ascended armor is _way_ better than we thought.

TL;DR Lesson of the Day: Use as FEW variables as possible. Stop screwing yourself over.

@ Aidan Savage. You forgot the Jewel for exotic trinkets, which you don’t have in ascended. The power you get from full exotic isn’t 2138 but 2288.

The wiki isn’t wrong.

But the point is still good. We all know that full ascended is better than full exotic. But ascended armor is a really really small increase in stats that is usually not really worth the investment.

That’s because you’re fooling yourself into thinking you know this stuff dgraves. If you’d look at the table, the table also includes UPGRADES to trinkets, which I’ve omitted for the sake of simplicity. It’s also more obvious when gear stats go up by MORE than 5% per tier. Using the table you yourself provided, a masterwork 2handed weapon has approximately 8.8889% more primary stat than fine. Rare has approximately 7.482993% more primary stat than masterwork. Exotic, finally, has approximately 51.265823% more primary stat than rare. Ascended, the BiS tier, has approximately 5.020921% better stats than exotic.

Aidan Savage.2078:

That’s because you’re fooling yourself into thinking you know this stuff dgraves. If you’d look at the table, the table also includes UPGRADES to trinkets, which I’ve omitted for the sake of simplicity. It’s also more obvious when gear stats go up by MORE than 5% per tier. Using the table you yourself provided, a masterwork 2handed weapon has approximately 8.8889% more primary stat than fine. Rare has approximately 7.482993% more primary stat than masterwork. Exotic, finally, has approximately 51.265823% more primary stat than rare. Ascended, the BiS tier, has approximately 5.020921% better stats than exotic.

Considering ascended have those upgrades rolled into them by design that was dumb.

This is why math is so elusive to most people; you need to know what those numbers mean, you can’t just say “Well, I don’t have to consider this or that based on design” for “simplicity”; you literally complicated a very, very simple process because you came out with an 11% increase between exotic and ascended.

According to your math Ascended isn’t just better, it’s two tiers better if every tier is worth 5%. It’s not just “worth getting” but through base stats alone it’s bizarre how much weaker you are.

Good god, it’s like you’re not going to get it. You are so sure of yourself without understanding what you’re doing because you can do PEMDAS but not an actual analysis.

Thaddeus.4891:

@ Aidan Savage. You forgot the Jewel for exotic trinkets, which you don’t have in ascended. The power you get from full exotic isn’t 2138 but 2288.

The wiki isn’t wrong.

But the point is still good. We all know that full ascended is better than full exotic. But ascended armor is a really really small increase in stats that is usually not really worth the investment.

The wiki isnt wrong, no, but his math is. I’ve omitted all upgrades in mine, using just the gear itself. Including upgrades make it more complex.

Arguing with DGraves is like talking to a very slow baby that’s sitting on a dictionary while occasionally flinging ripped out pages at you. It doesn’t understand what you’re saying, nor is anything of it coherent or of any value.

Ascended weapons make a somewhat huge difference because the basic weapon damage range is also increased. But overall I wouldn’t call the stat bonus by Ascended a major advantage, it is for the most part a status upgrade.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Arguing with DGraves is like talking to a very slow baby that’s sitting on a dictionary while occasionally flinging ripped out pages at you. It doesn’t understand what you’re saying, nor is anything of it coherent or of any value.

Ascended weapons make a somewhat huge difference because the basic weapon damage range is also increased. But overall I wouldn’t call the stat bonus by Ascended a major advantage, it is for the most part a status upgrade.

The damage range between exotic and ascended stays roughly the same actually, the damage is just higher.

It’s very simple dgraves. FULL ASCENDED is better than FULL EXOTICS by 16%. Why? Because I’m accounting for MORE than just the pretty numbers on the armor you call stats. The WEAPON damage difference is what makes the biggest difference between ascended and exotic. Granted, I doubt you understand that, or want to understand it since you seem to live in a world where ignoring all other relevant information is in high fashion right now.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Sourde Noire.5286:

Arguing with DGraves is like talking to a very slow baby that’s sitting on a dictionary while occasionally flinging ripped out pages at you. It doesn’t understand what you’re saying, nor is anything of it coherent or of any value.

Ascended weapons make a somewhat huge difference because the basic weapon damage range is also increased. But overall I wouldn’t call the stat bonus by Ascended a major advantage, it is for the most part a status upgrade.

The damage range between exotic and ascended stays roughly the same actually, the damage is just higher.

Actually (ironically) he is correct.

Damage from exotic weapon: (1101*2138*0.65)/2064=~741 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from exotic weapon (with ascended stats): (1101*2382*0.65)/2064=~825 avg damage (noncritical)
Damage from ascended weapon: (1150*2382*0.65)/2064=~862 avg damage (noncritical)

Looking at your analysis, even if the numbers are wrong (which actually is a problem and will skew the results), the average non-critical damage is 741 versus 862, the difference between those two is 121 and that over the course of a minute is 7,260. That means that to reach 1,000,000 dmg takes the 862 1,161 strikes (rounding up because partial strikes don’t exist) and the 741 requires 1,350. That ratio of 16% is definitely present but if we look at this “pragmatically” even if every attack only took half a second to execute that’s 94.5s extra.

But it gets worse. Let’s upgrade to greatsword and use .8 as the coefficient, using your numbers rounding to the integer:

1062 and 912.

To do the same 1m damage it takes the ascended sword 942 strikes and exotic 1096 strikes. Hopefully as you can see the ratio climbs a little, it’s still 16% for now, but it changes in the tenths column which is quite rapid if you think about it since we’re not incorporating any multiplicative bonuses.

Though our friend thinks that condition damage has diminishing returns he is actually absolutely right about how this works out when the coefficient is higher because the effect grows substantially. I could go on by multiplying the damage by an increase of 10% to show an even greater variance but …

Honestly, it’s Wednesday. Just don’t tell people the wrong thing, even if they believe all sorts of weird garbage.

The difference between Exotic and Ascended armors Berserker is about 3.5 might. That is a huge amount of power that you would never have if you were in all Exotics.

General Health.9678:

How is it hard to get hold of ascended equipment?
Also not sure why you think exotic is easy to get.
Also not sure why you think you can’t raid in exotics.

Half the players I know who still play the game, and the majority who have left, have never earned enough in all their play time to craft a full set of ascended gear. It just takes a ridiculous amount of time or gold, or both even if you split it.

Meanwhile, the gold spent means you aren’t getting other things you want, exactly what ANet wants because then you have to pay for them without the gold-to-gem exchange. Anyone remember the d3 auction house? Same principle. Players are only incentivized to pay for ANets cash shop goods when they can’t earn the gold to pay for them through gameplay, which means ANet is incentivized to make gameplay not as rewarding as it could be in order to make sales.

And the time spent, if you choose to go that route, is nothing short of mindless repetitive labour, work, you are literally working through a game, something meant to be fun, so that you can qualify to play future content that you will hopefully enjoy.

And that’s how hard it is.

um why is that bad exactly, players who have a mind of their own simply spend gold on what THEY want. The people who like the idea of long term goals may or may not fancy ascended gear which is offered as another choice. That’s good not bad because actually you need ascended gear for nothing.

vesica tempestas.1563:

um why is that bad exactly, players who have a mind of their own simply spend gold on what THEY want. The people who like the idea of long term goals may or may not fancy ascended gear which is offered as another choice. That’s good not bad because actually you need ascended gear for nothing.

If you need ascended gear for nothing, then it shouldn’t have had higher stats than exotic! It should have been like Elite armor from GW1. Meaning very expensive, and hard to get AESTHETIC look. For those who don’t know English that means just to look cool.

Conncept.7638:

General Health.9678:

How is it hard to get hold of ascended equipment?
Also not sure why you think exotic is easy to get.
Also not sure why you think you can’t raid in exotics.

Half the players I know who still play the game, and the majority who have left, have never earned enough in all their play time to craft a full set of ascended gear. It just takes a ridiculous amount of time or gold, or both even if you split it.

Meanwhile, the gold spent means you aren’t getting other things you want, exactly what ANet wants because then you have to pay for them without the gold-to-gem exchange. Anyone remember the d3 auction house? Same principle. Players are only incentivized to pay for ANets cash shop goods when they can’t earn the gold to pay for them through gameplay, which means ANet is incentivized to make gameplay not as rewarding as it could be in order to make sales.

And the time spent, if you choose to go that route, is nothing short of mindless repetitive labour, work, you are literally working through a game, something meant to be fun, so that you can qualify to play future content that you will hopefully enjoy.

And that’s how hard it is.

No_It’s_Not

Seriously half of the people you still play with and most of those who left apparently sold all of their materials. Trinkets are so easy to get they haven’t even introduced ascended Jeweler yet if ever. I play WvW casually atm and can still manage a weapon in two weeks. I have three sets of armor and I will be the first person to tell you that it just isn’t worth it. The performance of ascended over exotic armor isn’t even noticeable. So no it’s not hard to get ascended equipment.

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

vesica tempestas.1563:

um why is that bad exactly, players who have a mind of their own simply spend gold on what THEY want. The people who like the idea of long term goals may or may not fancy ascended gear which is offered as another choice. That’s good not bad because actually you need ascended gear for nothing.

If you need ascended gear for nothing, then it shouldn’t have had higher stats than exotic! It should have been like Elite armor from GW1. Meaning very expensive, and hard to get AESTHETIC look. For those who don’t know English that means just to look cool.

as i said you need it for nothing, you may WANT to aim for it, but you are not punished by not getting it. Some people for example like the idea of leveling high in fractals , some don’t.

Because you dont like or cant be bother doing something does not mean it should not exist for everyone else.

Ascended is needed for FoTM agony resists. Ascended Weapons and jewelry are highly recommended for Raids.

If you dont have ascended anything, save the laurels for your Neck and Accessories, run FoTM for Rings (buyable via FOTM currency) and a chance of Weapon, Armor, and Ring drops. And do Tequatl for your weapon crate chance.

And then do any of the Mystic Forge combines for your Acended Back item (68G~ for Kross on Kross)

And you will obtain ascended.

If its not the stats you want, reroll the weapons and/or armor in the mystic forge for 8-12g a pop.

its not that hard. just takes time.

….or spend the 1k to craft it.