Guild Wars 2

So far I only see this:
Introducing Ascended items, artifacts of great power that can be improved by a special new type of upgrade called Infusions, which can be found in dungeons. Look for more information about Ascended gear soon!

and..

One of the primary design purposes for the Ascended item tier is to bridge the gap between Exotic gear (which fairly casual players can have a reasonable certainty of acquiring without too much angst) and Legendaries (which are for the hardest of hardcores). Specifically, Ascended items will be used specifically to combat new endgame mechanics. Foes within the new Fractals of the Mists dungeon will inflict Agony on players. Agony can only be mitigated by Infusions, which can be put only into Ascended armor. As players get to higher levels of difficulty within the dungeon, they will eventually find a point at which they have to counter Agony (by Infusions) before they can hope to proceed. Rather than being upgraded with normal components, Ascended gear has upgrades built-in, and upgrade slots have been repurposed into Infusion slots.

November’s update will include only Ascended rings and back items. More Infusions and Ascended item types will be added with time. When Ascended items are added to the game, Legendary weapons will be updated so they are still the best available option (as opposed to being on-par with Exotic weapons, as they currently are).

To me it sounds like armor you find that really only works in this dungeon.

Slither Shade.4782:

Yes. One thief in a combination of karma, dungeon token, and TP exotics. Every possible slot and weapon combination. Underwater too. At this point I consider him done and I dont think the new gear changes that. Perhaps if I played wvwvw I might.

And when new content comes out that requires infusions that you don’t have on your gear.

AcidicVision.5498:

I like this topic. It shows how Ascended might not be the end of the world. I see lots of you are still using rare or even masterwork…yet still doing content, still doing dungeons, still doing big events.

There has largely been a “I’m just going to play the game and ill get it when I get it” mentality.

A new tier of gear isn’t going to change that.

It is the end all be all though, because without ascended gear you won’t be able to do the new dungeon. Ascended gear is the only way you can get infusions to counteract agony.

Didn’t even start.

Getting exotic gear is a bigger grind than I care for, so I’ve stopped playing a bit before lv80. When I do return, I’m likely to just get 100% completion on all maps below lv80 and then leave to other games.

fULL EXTIOC ON mf ARMOUR AND DUNGEON ARMOUR SET
all tinkets apart form one (amulet i think)
TWo COF weapons long/short bow
AC great sword with superior sigil of luck

Worst part i have spent time and gold all last week getting these thinking after that i could roll another toon. NOw ive wasted materials ang gold.

Really kitten catted the kitten meowed thundering thunder catted the smurf off.

Gahenna you are right. Im sick of my thief so am working on another class now otherwise Id go for the new gear on him. I will be trying to get the new gear tier on that new character.

One full exotic armor/jewelry set transmuted with T3 cultural.

Thankfully I became aware of Ascended armor before my Guardian got to 80, so I know not to waste my money on another Exotic set.

And for the love of god, please do not encourage Anet to make “Legendary” armor. Legendary weapons are all this game needs.

I have two sets of exotic armor on my ranger, along with five weapons. No trinkets, as I haven’t gotten round to upgrading from karma stuff and some lower level rares. I also haven’t yet settled on which superior runes to get for one armor set, which can add quite a lot to the base price.

I really don’t agree that exotic is too easy to get. Max-stat gear should always be firmly in the realms of achievable.

I like WvW, and the WvW gear I want is Soldier’s (power/vitality/toughness). The only way to get some soldier’s exotic gear is with badges. So far I’ve bought a greatsword (396), 2 swords (264 each), and 2 accessories (330 each). Total cost 1604 badges. I have 6,284 kills in WvW (some of my badges came from jumping puzzles).

I still need 2 rings (396 each) and an amulet (528), total cost 1320 badges, I have around 1150 to go. So I’m really only like 2/3rds of the way there. And I WvW alot! I wouldn’t consider myself a casual player. I STILL don’t have full exotics. Now I see that there’s a whole new tier of gear. I’m not done getting exotics yet, and there’s a whole new tier coming in three days. (Not only that, but I bought my armor with karma and got the legs with Catacombs tokens. Getting the armor I want doing the thing I most like – WvW – would have taken even longer)

And what happens when I do get my ascended gear? By that time the hardcore players will have had it for a while, and be grumbling for more, and if Anet uses the same reasoning then they’re using now, it’ll be time to introduce a new tier of gear just as I get about 2/3rds of my ascended set.

Full set of magic find, glad I didnt craft my damage set was about to today….

And now there all souldbound and worthless, can’t even get your money or ecto’s or ori ore back or gold that you spent…

Anet just screwed over anyone that worked on getting exotics for there character because they were told there would not be gear grind….

LIES.

I have 2 chars with full exotic. I like to WvW and I hate dungeons. I’m probably done after this new patch comes out.

Took me about a week to get full set of exotics from AC for the stats.

I also got a full set of different exotics just for the appearance, still missing the feet from arah thou as its always bugged.

Still girding for legendary looking froward to getting that.

Kyosji.8961:

So far I only see this:
Introducing Ascended items, artifacts of great power that can be improved by a special new type of upgrade called Infusions, which can be found in dungeons. Look for more information about Ascended gear soon!

and..

One of the primary design purposes for the Ascended item tier is to bridge the gap between Exotic gear (which fairly casual players can have a reasonable certainty of acquiring without too much angst) and Legendaries (which are for the hardest of hardcores). Specifically, Ascended items will be used specifically to combat new endgame mechanics. Foes within the new Fractals of the Mists dungeon will inflict Agony on players. Agony can only be mitigated by Infusions, which can be put only into Ascended armor. As players get to higher levels of difficulty within the dungeon, they will eventually find a point at which they have to counter Agony (by Infusions) before they can hope to proceed. Rather than being upgraded with normal components, Ascended gear has upgrades built-in, and upgrade slots have been repurposed into Infusion slots.

November’s update will include only Ascended rings and back items. More Infusions and Ascended item types will be added with time. When Ascended items are added to the game, Legendary weapons will be updated so they are still the best available option (as opposed to being on-par with Exotic weapons, as they currently are).

To me it sounds like armor you find that really only works in this dungeon.

The stats will also be slightly higher then then current exotics if you look at the picture comparing the two rings you can see.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

It isn’t a gear treadmill. I wish there weren’t so many babies on this game that automatically call something a treadmill they know nothing about. Do you really have that little faith that the people who made this game will do the right thing? They spent 5 years of their life or maybe more working on this and you really think they are going to immediately go to a system that they specifically said they wouldn’t?

The game doesn’t currently have a level 80 armor set. You can start getting exotics at level 60 so they are not end game only. Now they added an end game set that many people have been begging for. The stat change is minimal. If you don’t like it… Don’t get it. You’ll be missing out on less than 50 of a stat. Seriously… Get over yourself.

Exotics in this game are currently faceroll to get anyway so it’s not like you worked for them. Now they are adding a set that you can only get from the hardest dungeon in the game. Good for them. Making people work for gear.

I’ll say again with SS attached. The stat changes are minimal. The only reason worth grinding the gear is for the infusion slot… That guess what… Only works in the new dungeon! See what they did there? If you’re not doing the new dungeon. Don’t worry about it.

I have full exotic (other than the back piece) on 3 characters; transmuted with the look I want.

If ascended gear gets released with higher than fully upgraded exotic level stats (as inferred from the picture), I’ll feel like I wasted money (both in game currency and RL money for the transmutation stones).

The power and precision are the minor stats. The magic find, the major stat, being significantly larger is what concerns me.

nah like in other mmo you will have to upgrade your gear to get better, and if it comes every 6-7 months, imho will be a great improvement to the longevity of this game

I have full exotics on 2 characters, and I did the exact same way.

I leveled normally 1~80, finished to 80 with about 45~55% World Completion. Then I’d sell all the crafting materials I’ve got, I’d get about 10~11g, which was enough to buy all the craftable Armor.

Then I’d take my time doing some events for another 12g for the Trinkets, and 3g for the Weapon.

Though, if I ever leveled another character today, I’d probably save some gold by running dungeons and getting these, since they have some stats I’d like better than craftables and I can save the Armor/Weapons gold.

You can’t have FULL exotic since the back slot item is a screw job limited to a green you must go thru a nut stapling misery of a story quest to obtain (wasn’t so bad the first time even though the ending is horrific, but doing it repeatedly makes you want to rip your own head off….I literally quiver at the thought of hearing another trahearne speech).

Anyways.

I’m fully exotic on 3 80’s. It’s cake since you can do it all thru crafting and I got a lot of it done before they nerfed the T6 spawn cycles into unfun oblivion. Even so, I could easily get it done quickly for a new 80 now with 3 80’s doing gathering runs and gold earned before selling exotic weapons became misery too. (Seems like a common theme in this game is taking out fun and replacing it with misery, IMO, for ex, I used to like buying unidentified dyes, but that’s gone as well.)

I like crafting but I think it was a bad idea to make it so that ALL exotics (except universally unavailable lame black slot) were so readily available via crafting. Too exploitable and too easy even if it doesn’t work for some.

You also had the problem of speed runs and other exploitive ways of getting set exotics fast early too.

Overall, endgame gear in this game was poorly thought out.

And now to make it worse, they’re going back on “there will be no gear tiers” and already adding a new tier. Oh. Yay.

Another fun element of this is that IMO ANet did a weak job of internal testing on all content not experienced by beta tester players, especially the Orr zones and explorable modes (lotsa exploits discovered and closed and entire emblem system revamped since release). So far their track record on patches hasn’t been so great either (usually have 1+ subsequent patches to fix (often glaring) issues).

The chances of this new dungeon being exploit free and fully functional as intended are pretty low, IMO. I don’t have much faith in ANet’s internal testing or testing methodologies at this point.

Bad design move + weak testing = incoming lameness.