Guild Wars 2

PopeUrban.2578:

dalendria.3762:

PopeUrban.2578:

The real problem people have with fractals is not the fractals, its the ascended gear “treadmill”

That treadmill is the point of the fractals. Its a scaling difficulty with scaling rewards that encourages constant statistical upgrades to progress through difficulty.

The problem is, quite simply, people are convincing themselves they need ascended items when they don’t.

You just made the argument that some of us who hate the change have been saying for days.

1. You said it is a treadmill. That is what we have been saying.
2. You said “people are convincing themselves they ‘need’ ascended items when they don’t.”

We have been saying that the vertical progression group has “convinced” themselves that they need “gear stat tier progression” in order to have character progression. We have been saying that GW2 was not designed or launched for that.

The GW2 horizontal progression model was based on “choice” and fun. Do what you want because you are enjoying it.

Linsey Murdock said about the introduction of Ascendant Gear/Lost Shores:
“Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic ‘need’ for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level.”

Why did the “most dedicated players” feel that they “needed” the introduction of gear stat progression to advance their characters?

Because, in the content that is designed to be repeated at increasing challenge levels there would otherwise be a hard ceiling on the “endless challenge” which is the entire point of fractals. Ascended gear did not breed fractals, fractals bred ascended gear. Quite simply it is a type of content (optional content for the types of players that enjoy it, like jumping puzzles or dungeons) that would have just been a bad implementation without vertical progression to compensate for the vertical progression of the fractals.

I get what you are saying now. But why not just add an Infusion slot to the Max Stat Exotics? For those that need stat progression, they could have gone after the better infusion items they plan to release (fine, masterwork, rare, exotic, etc). Per the patch, the Infusion items has the agony resistance plus stats.

Even use the event to promote the existence of “hard to get” Exotics that have cooler looks. I really don’t think that a lot people know there are better looking Exotics that require a lot of time or grind if you want them fast.

In fact, pursuit of these Exotic weaponss was the intermediate step before going after a Legendary. And if the plan to add Legendary armor, the “harder to get” Exotic armor would have also filled the "time: gap.

There was no need for Ascendant to bridge an “effort time” gap unless they always intended to introduce “gear stat” progression post launch.

Kumu Honua.2751:

I’ve had groups with rogues that had no ranged weapons, an elementalist with no underwater weapon whatsoever. I have had groups where people would leave the group immediately if we get swamp/dredge/ascalon as #2/3.

Pugs are whole new levels of fail at times.

When you get that one group though, the ones where people don’t stand in the fire…smoothness. It’s glorious.

My first attempt at fractals was with a PuG (My guild had started before I got back from class and I didn’t want to have them rerun lower levels because of me).

We had 2 rangers 1 Necro 1 Thief and Me (Guardian).

There was a down here and there and I did have to switch to mace/focus to be more tankier than I am normally but it was gloriously smooth. No problems. No issues. Nothing. We even laughed as people fell at the Colossus Fractal.

Well on my server you can’t even get to arah right now.

My point is they designed dungeons to be difficult. This is fine.

However taking into account not everyone is the same level, in the same guild, and all online at the same time. It is something they should consider.

I can’t get pugs on skype/ventrillo. Also I am not arguing/complaining that they won’t bring out PVE content in the future. Just that it makes the game less fun for a period of time (not horrible just less fun).

Obviously I am not the only one that feels this way.

Main difficulties are

-trying to find a group
-agony resistances should not exist, nor should agony itself (unless it is only for this dungeon).
-not putting out anything to encourage players to want to do anything else.

That last one is the main problem. Its making a giant magnet for gear progression and then only putting one place out for it with a lot of bad people to deal with and in part damaging the community.

dalendria.3762:

PopeUrban.2578:

dalendria.3762:

PopeUrban.2578:

The real problem people have with fractals is not the fractals, its the ascended gear “treadmill”

That treadmill is the point of the fractals. Its a scaling difficulty with scaling rewards that encourages constant statistical upgrades to progress through difficulty.

The problem is, quite simply, people are convincing themselves they need ascended items when they don’t.

You just made the argument that some of us who hate the change have been saying for days.

1. You said it is a treadmill. That is what we have been saying.
2. You said “people are convincing themselves they ‘need’ ascended items when they don’t.”

We have been saying that the vertical progression group has “convinced” themselves that they need “gear stat tier progression” in order to have character progression. We have been saying that GW2 was not designed or launched for that.

The GW2 horizontal progression model was based on “choice” and fun. Do what you want because you are enjoying it.

Linsey Murdock said about the introduction of Ascendant Gear/Lost Shores:
“Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic ‘need’ for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level.”

Why did the “most dedicated players” feel that they “needed” the introduction of gear stat progression to advance their characters?

Because, in the content that is designed to be repeated at increasing challenge levels there would otherwise be a hard ceiling on the “endless challenge” which is the entire point of fractals. Ascended gear did not breed fractals, fractals bred ascended gear. Quite simply it is a type of content (optional content for the types of players that enjoy it, like jumping puzzles or dungeons) that would have just been a bad implementation without vertical progression to compensate for the vertical progression of the fractals.

I get what you are saying now. But why not just add an Infusion slot to the Max Stat Exotics? For those that need stat progression, they could have gone after the better infusion items they plan to release (fine, masterwork, rare, exotic, etc). Per the patch, the Infusion items has the agony resistance plus stats.

Even use the event to promote the existence of “hard to get” Exotics that have cooler looks. I really don’t think that a lot people know there are better looking Exotics that require a lot of time or grind if you want them fast.

In fact, pursuit of these Exotics were the intermediate step before going after a Legendary. There was no need for Ascendant to bridge an “effort time” gap unless they always intended to introduce “gear stat” progression post launch.

I tend to disagree. Full exotics? About a week, maybe two. A single legendary weapon? Months to years depending on how lucky you are. Now, multiply that by an entire suit of legendary armor and accessories.

In between? Grinding for your legendary with no payoff.

Honestly I wouldn’t have cared if ascended stuff had the same stats as exotic stuff, and all the bonus stats were in the infusions. It is what it is at this point, and for the most part I’m just happy to get a little more payoff in terms of stuff for my character. Yes, it could have been cosmetic, and I still would have gone for it.

The fact that it’s a small incremental boost in stats with a reasonable but not trivial amount of effort to acquire feels good. Unlike that legendary, ascended items actually feel, to me, like something that’s within my grasp. When I was in rares, exotics felt within my grasp.

I think the idea was that by the time you’ve grasped all your ascended items, then legendaries should feel similarly within your grasp. And once you’ve got your legendaries… well… Daaaang. You’re shiny and awesome looking and have reached the top of the mountain.

ThePedroKid.2580:

I think the point of Anet Chris’ post needs to be considered.

They are intending to completely re-work all dungeons. To me that feels like Ascended may begin to play a bigger role. I could be wrong, but I rarely am.

You are not wrong. They know the statistical advantage of the complete Ascendant Gear set they plan to release over time.

They need to adjust all mobs to rebalance the game for the new gear tier. Remember, until the change, they said the Exotics were the Max Stat gear. They spent months, maybe even years trying to balance the game on that tier. They cannot have us feeling too overpowered or underpowered.

With that said, I wonder what having Ascended Gear will do to downleveling. Will we start to be able to one-shot mobs? If so, that will also undermine their statements about the purpose of downleveling and their expected outcomes if we play with our lower lvl friends?

dalendria.3762:

ThePedroKid.2580:

I think the point of Anet Chris’ post needs to be considered.

They are intending to completely re-work all dungeons. To me that feels like Ascended may begin to play a bigger role. I could be wrong, but I rarely am.

You are not wrong. They know the statistical advantage of the complete Ascendant Gear set they plan to release over time.

They need to adjust all mobs to rebalance the game for the new gear tier. Remember, until the change, they said the Exotics were the Max Stat gear. They spent months, maybe even years trying to balance the game on that tier. They cannot have us feeling too overpowered or underpowered.

With that said, I wonder what having Ascended Gear will do to downleveling. Will we start to be able to one-shot mobs? If so, that will also undermine their statements about the purpose of downleveling and their expected outcomes if we play with our lower lvl friends?

Or, you know, dungeon gear could be moving to a more appropriate ascended level reward system for its difficulty and time consumption. At least that’s what I would be doing with it. Dungeon armor? vetted to ascended.

First, I’d like to state that I like the idea of Ascended Gear and the new dungeon as well. I enjoyed progressing from Masterwork to Rare to Exotic Gear at a reasonable pace (not very slow like other MMOs but not too quickly). And soon I’ll be progressing to full Ascended Gear as it starts to come out and I am fine with it taking some time to get as that is what will keep me and others still playing this game, some sort of progression (although I would prefer that no more higher gear tiers be added after this point, only new gear with the same stats). What I’m not okay with though is….

1. The only way to currently get Ascended Gear is through the Fractals dungeon. This restricts that game right there. Forcing people to play this dungeon just to get the gear that they want. Rare and exotic worked well as you could get it from crafting, loot, trading post, coin, WvW, and Karma. It gave people options and allowed everyone to play how they wanted to. I believe everyone would be fine with this gear if it was obtainable in the same number of ways that exotics are. That way people will achieve it just from playing how they wish, instead of being restricted to this one dungeon or dungeons in general if this continues into the future. Now, it is still early and all the Ascended Gear isn’t even out, so I have hope that it won’t take the road of dungeon only gear.

2. Fractals of the Mists is great, but it has too many difficulty tiers which completely ruins it. It divides people so much it is starting to get very bad in-game. It’s becoming hard to find a group for lower levels as everyone has been grinding away to get to higher tiers and there is no reason to play lower tiers. I’m a player who plays all content in moderation, so I can’t keep up with this and now I’m stuck at level 3 in this dungeon unable to find a group. I would say either let us play all difficulties without having to do the previous one, but greatly up the difficulty, or please restrict it to only about 5 difficulty tiers so it doesn’t take forever to catch up (or any other way that works). Just don’t keep the current way as it restricts and divides us players way too much.

Adding this dungeon and new gear tier to the game wasn’t necessary bad, but how it was added is bad. With the Ascended gear coming only from this dungeon and the dungeon having so many difficulty tiers with lower tiers being mostly useless, the game is becoming restricted to many players and will soon become unbalanced if Ascended Gear continues to only come from dungeons. Please take this into consideration AN, and to anyone who reads feel free to add in your thoughts as well.

The first night it opened we had a good guild group run FOTM. Honestly, the dredge suit event was a great reminder of what I loved back when I used to raid 3-4 nights a week. Hard at first, but work with the group to learn, adapt, and improve in a fight with some finicky but smart mechanics and then ultimately conquer it to great satisfaction (ok, it was only the third try). Still, it was really fun to do that again. Once.

But I agree with the OP – the tiering structure makes me not want to go back with pugs. I can’t just look for any good group, it has to be someone willing to do levels 1-3 at a time when server demand is for level 8 and up. And if we complete two bosses but people leave on the 3rd, it was a waste of time. The point becomes progression for progression’s sake, not for actually enjoying and overcoming the content itself.

I liked this game precisely because I don’t need to play on a strict schedule and, other than fractals, it lets me group (or not group) as I see fit. Likewise, if a guild group wants me to join them for level 8, why should they have to pug it?

For better or worse, fractals is one aspect of this game moving into “progression” territory in a way that is antithetical to the main reason I chose this game over pandas. Just my opinion.

It’s really not that hard, I expected a lot more of a grind for them tbh, considering they’re bridging the gap between exotic and legendary gear. The moment I saw it was a showable quiver, it was a ‘must have’ for me and my Ranger and so I set out to do it;

Philosopher’s Stones: If you’ve played the game to 80 and done a bit of exploring on the way, you should have enough skill points for these.

Mist Essence: No idea why you guys are seemingly having such poor luck over these, it took me a while to get my first one but it comes naturally, tbh, I got mine long before I had the other mats so I didn’t mind. I can understand the frustration if it was the -only- thing left that you needed, but the fractals are a great source of ectos as well, which you need.

Ectos: Keep doing the fractals, keep getting gold items (a bit of RNG, but the more you do it, the better chance you’ll have and the further you go the better chance too). I’ve been pretty lucky with my drops and salvages and have gotten my 50 ectos already and we haven’t even hit level 10 yet, although I’ve salvaged golds gotten from elsewhere like AC Exp too.

250 tier 6 crafting mat: Fair play, this is a bit of a grind, but if you’re desperate for a quiver or any kind of ascended gear, you’re looking at it costing less than 50g for 250 vicious claws. For an item that’s supposedly meant to ‘bridge the gap between exotic gear and legendary’ it costs 1/4 of a precursor for a legendary.

I’ve been playing casually, enjoying doing FotM with my friends and the odd AC Catacombs explorable with my friends, as well as buying vicious claws from the AH by selling all the stuff I get from fractals. Right now, I’m less than 100 vicious claws off of the quiver. Pfft, it’s not a grind at all, it has been like a week since fractals came out and I, a casual player, almost have the ascended quiver. (Legendaries take months for dedicated players, maybe?)

Quit complaining, it’s easy and if you have friends to play with it doesn’t feel like a grind at all.

Actually if it allowed you to save progress from just doing 1 dungeon. It would make life easier. I understand that you don’t want people to cheat and just do certain dungeons. (they are probably doing that anyway though).

Just a thought. My other points still stand though.

If you want to make a post about ascension gear there’s a proper thread for it you know.

I’ve wondered about this myself. Don’t let it translate to WvW, or even out-in-the-world PvE (altho to me that wouldn’t really have as much of an effect as WvW). Keeping it applicable to the (new?) dungeons might be a good answer to a highly contested issue.

I’ve made a similar suggestion a few days ago, during the height of this whole ascended gear fiasco.

Like the gear grinders have their ascended gear, which they claim they need for ever increasing dungeon difficulty. Let the rest of us play the game how we want without any imbalances that ascended gear brings into the equation.

obstinate giraffe.9276:

Pfft, it’s not a grind at all, it has been like a week since fractals came out and I, a casual player, almost have the ascended quiver. (Legendaries take months for dedicated players, maybe?)

Quit complaining, it’s easy and if you have friends to play with it doesn’t feel like a grind at all.

It’s still a day short of a week, but since you’re close to having (by your own words) let’s say it takes you a week to get it. That’s a week, for one piece. Right know there are 3 pieces that you can replace with Ascended items. That’s 3 weeks. Anet has already stated their plans to implement full Ascended gear, which would be 13-14 (depending on 2H vs 1H weapons). That’s13-14 weeks if each part takes the same amount of time, and I assume some pieces (weapons, chest/leg armor) will take more to craft while others take less. I would consider 3 1/2 months to equip a character to be a huge grind. In the time it takes to get a single piece of this gear, you could have a couple sets of exotic. The value of the ecto alone could buy you at least one set.

This is also relying on RNG/luck to get one of the items. I may be recalling this incorrectly, but I do believe I saw at least one claim of someone reaching level 10 and only seeing a single mist essence drop amoung the entire group of 5. Going by Anet’s own estimates, that’s at least 8-10 hours of play, per player. So 40-50 man-hours produced only one of this item. This is the far end of the spectrum from some other players, but the fact still stands that RNG is random and it is possible to spend a year doing these daily and never see a drop.

Aleaf.8174:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Ganzo.5079:

Really funny, so you have to grind, and use MF gear too? and this isnt grind? only the fact tha ppl use that cursed MF gear in a dungeon group to drop a particular item, is synonymous of GRIND.

Also it annoys people like me to have proper DPS, no MF gear so I can maximise the chances of actual finishing dungeons, whilst others capitalise on that.

Wait wait wait, you mean people actually have problems clearing Fractals below lvl 10?

You’d be surprised. People wearing MF gear dying all over the place while blaming the rest of the party for their failure. During one run I had a guy take off all of his armor while fighting the last boss in the norn snow zone, the one with frostbite debuff (forgot the name). I’ve had people randomly leave.

PUGing this instance is a nightmare. ArenaNet needs to change the requirement of completing 3 fractals before advancing to the next difficulty level. Make it still require 3 to advance but make one fractal count as 1/3. So you would still need to finish 3 to advance but at least you won’t feel like you completely wasted your time if someone leaves on the last fight. So you can slowly work on getting to another difficulty, one fractal at a time.

You have to spam the same dungeon over and over again.
It’s the definition of grind.

No other available options for them (crafting and wvw?) is actually my only problem with this new tier of gear.

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

Sadly its too late now to fix it by restricting it to the fractals. And here is why.

People have already obtained a cloak and a ring (or 2), which in turn means they have salvaged their old items no doubt or in the case of backs, vendored them.

Only move Anet can do to revert anything is by giving the new gear exo stats and infusions only to give agony resist. Its too late for anything else.

I thought it would be much harder to get the ascendant pieces that matters, but it only requires you to get to difficulty 10 for the regular ascendant rings. The one with extra resistance is obtained at level 20 but is a waste if you only want to PvP and farm or do dungeons.

I just reached level 11 difficulty on my enginner, got a drop at the extra boss in difficulty 10 and I got my first ascendant ring. Sadly it was a necro ring so now my necro is my best geared toon with an ascendant back (which everyone can get, costs roughly 15g and up depending on stats) and a ring.

Now all thats needed for me is to run a level 10 each day and get my mesmer and necro to level 10 too in order to get 3 dailies done per day (I do think its on a character to character basis and not account wide since difficulty is saved per character).

If it wont take more than this per day I dont see it as a big roadblock to me personally, but I still think its wrong to not have the ascendant pieces available for WvW currency already.

edit: Also a sidenote, the fractals arent very hard or time consuming. All you need are people that knows what to do and are ok with telling it to the group. I went from 5-11 today, had one wipe before level 10, then a few at level 10 because we kittened up. But since you get more silver in there than you need for repairs its all ok in my book.

If you havent tried it yet, please do, its not a clusterkitten like other dungeons in the game.

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

I agree ~ I have 800 hours on my account, and I’ve yet to break 50g. Let alone farming 300 ectos + 250 T6 mats. Lets not even talk about the hour+ time sitting around Lions Arch trying to get a group your scale level so you can progress. The entire Fractal Dungeon system + Ascended is a huge failure, and the entire game will suffer greatly for it unless Anet developers can think of some otherway to balance everything out again, especially that doesn’t requiring 3+ months of grinding for gold/mats etc ~ because if nothing changes, this game will be dead in 3 months time.

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

The infused version also takes a Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence which takes 5 Vials of Condensed Mists Essence to make (in addition to other items), and a Gift of Ascension which costs 500 Fractal Relics. So you would need to get lucky with RNG five times to make a single piece, and do Fractals enough to get 500 tokens. According to wiki, that would take 12 runs at difficulty 10. So 10-12 hours for enough tokens to make a single piece.

And after all of this, you still need an infusion to put in the empty slot. That’s another 2 runs (2 hours) for 75 relics get the most basic infusion that can only be put in a defensive infusion slot (books have this type, quivers have offensive), or another 5 runs to get an omni infusion for 225 relics.

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

mrstealth.6701:

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

The infused version also takes a Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence which takes 5 Vials of Condensed Mists Essence to make (in addition to other items), and a Gift of Ascension which costs 500 Fractal Relics. So you would need to get lucky with RNG five times to make a single piece, and do Fractals enough to get 500 tokens. According to wiki, that would take 12 runs at difficulty 10. So 10-12 hours for enough tokens to make a single piece.

And after all of this, you still need an infusion to put in the empty slot.

Globs also drop in higher-level difficulties, according to the Wiki… which is why I declined to mention it. I’ve no clue how drops are past level 7.

Also fractal of the mist drop a kittenload of rare ive seen someone make 30ecto in a single run.

ledzep.9504:

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

You mean you don’t want to make it to Fractal level 50?

ledzep.9504:

Also fractal of the mist drokittenttenload of rare ive seen someone make 30ecto in a single run.

Must be after level 10 or something…

And if this is common, I wonder why the cost of ecto hasn’t plummeted yet.

Minos.5168:

ledzep.9504:

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

You mean you don’t want to make it to Fractal level 50?

The time you get to fractal 50 you will have made 300ecto worth of rare loot, way more than 500 token and probably if your not unlucky enough vial to make a glob.

krookie.6378:

You’d be surprised. People wearing MF gear dying all over the place while blaming the rest of the party for their failure. During one run I had a guy take off all of his armor while fighting the last boss in the norn snow zone, the one with frostbite debuff (forgot the name). I’ve had people randomly leave.

MF gear doesn’t cause people to die more. Lack of skill does. Frostbite for example is just player stupidity. Standing in the torch attack for long enough to get 8 stacks of frostbite and turned to ice? That’s just lack of skill. Random leaving/disconnecting is really annoying but moreso is that they cannot rejoin. Hard to tell those who disconnect and those who up and leave unless they are whining the whole time or complaining that “THE SWAMP IS TOO HARD!”

Minos.5168:

ledzep.9504:

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

You mean you don’t want to make it to Fractal level 50?

They’ve already said that infusions are intended to be a requirement at higher levels. But the built-in infuse/agony resist is only of use inside Fractals. However, the infusions above the most basic types also have added standard stats, making them a requirement for a “maxed out” set of gear no matter where you are in the game (outside of sPvP).

Minos.5168:

ledzep.9504:

Also fractal of the mist drokittenttenload of rare ive seen someone make 30ecto in a single run.

Must be after level 10 or something…

And if this is common, I wonder why the cost of ecto hasn’t plummeted yet.

No it wasnt common he was pretty lucky, he probably had 10 time 3 ecto or something.
And yes loot get better after 10.

My point is you only have one ascended item you can ’’grind’’ and it wont become necessary until the very late level where at this point you should already have everything you need to make it.

mrstealth.6701:

obstinate giraffe.9276:

Pfft, it’s not a grind at all, it has been like a week since fractals came out and I, a casual player, almost have the ascended quiver. (Legendaries take months for dedicated players, maybe?)

Quit complaining, it’s easy and if you have friends to play with it doesn’t feel like a grind at all.

It’s still a day short of a week, but since you’re close to having (by your own words) let’s say it takes you a week to get it. That’s a week, for one piece. Right know there are 3 pieces that you can replace with Ascended items. That’s 3 weeks. Anet has already stated their plans to implement full Ascended gear, which would be 13-14 (depending on 2H vs 1H weapons). That’s13-14 weeks if each part takes the same amount of time, and I assume some pieces (weapons, chest/leg armor) will take more to craft while others take less. I would consider 3 1/2 months to equip a character to be a huge grind. In the time it takes to get a single piece of this gear, you could have a couple sets of exotic. The value of the ecto alone could buy you at least one set.

This is also relying on RNG/luck to get one of the items. I may be recalling this incorrectly, but I do believe I saw at least one claim of someone reaching level 10 and only seeing a single mist essence drop amoung the entire group of 5. Going by Anet’s own estimates, that’s at least 8-10 hours of play, per player. So 40-50 man-hours produced only one of this item. This is the far end of the spectrum from some other players, but the fact still stands that RNG is random and it is possible to spend a year doing these daily and never see a drop.

And forget having more than one build or character. Just spam your same 1-5 weapon skills for thousands of hours. How engaging.

Do I have to go to a dungeon or a fractal to get it?

I just want to point out to the people who haven’t yet tried how easy it is to get your legendary precursor.
I got dusk on the first chest of my second dungeon. (this wasn’t just luck, another in my group looted dawn, and two other ppl each looted the legend). Then it took me 45 minutes to get the mats for forge…
Gift of mastery is after 500 badges of honor from wvw. I’m no where near that yet but I will get there. Honestly, this is not a gear treadmill.
So far wow wars 2 has been a lot of fun even since all the idiots who want to have fun without getting good gears (AKA WHINERS) and I must say the art and environments are AMAZING. Good job Arena net

You have to grind the content to get the new tier items, whether fate smiles on you or not, it is the very definition of a grind. And, the per piece time required makes it a much steeper grind than the grindy MMO I came from to escape the grind. Glad RNG smiled upon you. cheers.

Ryan.6951:

I just want to point out to the people who haven’t yet tried how easy it is to get your legendary precursor.
I got dusk on the first chest of my second dungeon. (this wasn’t just luck, another in my group looted dawn, and two other ppl each looted the legend). Then it took me 45 minutes to get the mats for forge…
Gift of mastery is after 500 badges of honor from wvw. I’m no where near that yet but I will get there. Honestly, this is not a gear treadmill.
So far wow wars 2 has been a lot of fun even since all the idiots who want to have fun without getting good gears (AKA WHINERS) and I must say the art and environments are AMAZING. Good job Arena net

Except your legendary currently has the same stats as my exotic, so I can say “Congratulations” and complement you on your nice new piece of shiny gear. But that grinding did not make your gear any more effective and we are still playing on a level playing field.

Just 1 aspect of horizontal progression, guys! Wow!

It doesn’t matter regardless, if you can’t get a group to run the fractal level you require – all these arguments are a moot point anyway. How many of you guys that are not in a static fractal group and are running fractals your level without waiting for hours for a party?

Kumu Honua.2751:

krookie.6378:

You’d be surprised. People wearing MF gear dying all over the place while blaming the rest of the party for their failure. During one run I had a guy take off all of his armor while fighting the last boss in the norn snow zone, the one with frostbite debuff (forgot the name). I’ve had people randomly leave.

MF gear doesn’t cause people to die more. Lack of skill does. Frostbite for example is just player stupidity. Standing in the torch attack for long enough to get 8 stacks of frostbite and turned to ice? That’s just lack of skill. Random leaving/disconnecting is really annoying but moreso is that they cannot rejoin. Hard to tell those who disconnect and those who up and leave unless they are whining the whole time or complaining that “THE SWAMP IS TOO HARD!”

My point was more to point out that I’ve had some terrible experiences running fractals in a pug. You’re right though, MF gear doesn’t make you die quicker but you do contribute a bit less to the fight.

Basically to make the story short, even though I like the dungeon itself, I’m completely turned off from FotM because of everything else associated with it.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

It doesn’t matter regardless, if you can’t get a group to run the fractal level you require – all these arguments are a moot point anyway. How many of you guys that are not in a static fractal group and are running fractals your level without waiting for hours for a party?

Im having a pretty easy time getting a group with gw2lfg.com.

They still need to implement something to make it easier tho

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

Who cares? Thats what the whiners asked for and got. However, if you dont plan on running for more than BiS gear for everything besides fractals all you need are the regular pieces. The infused piece only comes with resistance, worthless outside the fractals.

The difference between regular and infused is +5 agony resist.

edit: Also regarding group finding, yes it can be annoying, yes its not perfect. But I havent spent much time lfg. I’ve found good groups and done more than 1 difficulty at a time. 5-11 just today, covered with 2 groups.

ledzep.9504:

Yep and theres no reason to get it unless you want to take less damage from agony in fractal of the mist. And you dont even need it there unless you just want it easy.

There is a reason, and it’s name is WvW. If you want to be as effective as possible in WvW you need the highest possible stats. If ascended gear had the same stats as exotic but added resistance for agony, you’d be right, but that isn’t the case.

There are many players who don’t like dungeons, myself included. I bought the game for WvW on the premise that I could mostly or entirely play that game mode and remain at max stats without being locked into a dungeon grind.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

Who cares? Thats what the whiners asked for and got. However, if you dont plan on running for more than BiS gear for everything besides fractals all you need are the regular pieces. The infused piece only comes with resistance, worthless outside the fractals.

The difference between regular and infused is +5 agony resist.

edit: Also regarding group finding, yes it can be annoying, yes its not perfect. But I havent spent much time lfg. I’ve found good groups and done more than 1 difficulty at a time. 5-11 just today, covered with 2 groups.

Infusions also have stats, and there are more tiers to come.

I know theres still no ascended armor and weapons in game but im pretty confused with their stats and the upgrade slot reserved for infusions. Eg the Yakkington ring featured in the official thread with these stats:
+ 50 Power
+ 50 Precision
+ 10% Magic Find
+ 18 Precision
+ 18 Power
- Infusion upgrade slot
1. Why are the added bonus stats not in the same order as the base stats. I know its a silly remark but it really jumps out and we all know looks are everything.
2. On a more serious note; why include those stats directly onto the items instead of providing the standard upgrade slot along with the infusion ugrade slot? Why remove the possibilty for us to choose the upgrade we want like it is right now?
And this brings me to the reason why i made the topic: What is the runes’ and sigils’ future? Are we really expected to invest in superior runes for our exotics just to completely scrap them when we upgrade to ascended? Are the varied runes upgrades providing a wide range of effects beide the standard +X STAT Y such a bad concept that it doesnt work for end gear? Or does the dumbing down of game mechanics come hand in hand with gear progression?

I am thinking they might do runes on the main armor and infusions off the off slots.
I can’t see them removing runes from armor as they are kind of a core part of the gearing system. On the other hand upgrade slots on the off items are a little odd in the way they are done now for high end gear so infusions replacing the normal upgrade slot on them I can see working well.

Oh wow! I never knew what those vials were for. I pick up 2 of those on my first run and both came in the first 30 minutes. I’ve got no magic find so I guess I consider myself lucky. :/

I am curious to the answer as well. Does this mean legendary weapons will be stuck with sigils they are made with if they don’t let use modify runes/sigils? If they do keep upgrade slot for weapons and armor, ascended will have lower that’s than currently expected though. One of reasons ascended gear is notably better is because the built in upgrade slots are scaled up too. E.g. the berserker ring part of the ascended equivalent is only a couple more, but the exquisite ruby jewelry equivalent in the built in upgrade slot is add another good bit onto the ring. Then you got stats from the infusion too. On the other hand it is kinda nice for some, like soldiers. Currently you can get soldier jewelry in exotic, but there is no exotic soldiers upgrade so you need to use rare, making full soldiers exotic jewelry weaker than other exotic soldiers jewelry. Ascended kinda fixed that.
I guess we’ll just need to wait and see how the runes/sigils work. Hopefully we won’t have to wait long.

I predict ‘Armouring Infusion’ and ‘Weaponised Infusions’ . Which will perform as Superior Runes+ Sigils! but are ‘slightly better’ than existing runes + sigils and fuction as infusion too! (requires xxx tier infusion, 100 obsidian lodestones, 200skill pts and 50 Superior rune/sigil you desire… only!)

The issue with the time on fractals isn’t how long it takes to run them, it’s how long it takes to get a group. The fractal could take 15 minutes but if finding a group takes an hour then it becomes far more time consuming

Welcome to RNG treadmill grinding. For some people it’s awesome, for others it’s a nightmare.

Those of you who missed Vanilla WoW are getting a nice taste of how classical theme park mmos used to be. It’s just a shame you are experiencing it in GW2…

I agree add add the WvW portals to the Mist and remove it from the PvE side. Then the gear grind fans can do what they want and those of us that do not wish to grind endless dungeons can play the way we want.

Amd the grinders can spend all their time doing what they enjoy.
And why do the gear grind crowd have such a fit over this idea?

Because then they wouldn’t be able to shout gloat over their fancy dancy new gear to everyone?

Rejam.3946:

SneakyErvin.3056:

Minos.5168:

To anyone saying that it’s not a grind…

Tell me how 300 ecto is “not a grind.”

That’s right, THREE HUNDRED ECTO for Infused Ascended gear.

Plus 250 of whatever T6 crafting material you need.

Who cares? Thats what the whiners asked for and got. However, if you dont plan on running for more than BiS gear for everything besides fractals all you need are the regular pieces. The infused piece only comes with resistance, worthless outside the fractals.

The difference between regular and infused is +5 agony resist.

edit: Also regarding group finding, yes it can be annoying, yes its not perfect. But I havent spent much time lfg. I’ve found good groups and done more than 1 difficulty at a time. 5-11 just today, covered with 2 groups.

Infusions also have stats, and there are more tiers to come.

Have even looked at the gear not labeled (infused)? Probably not.

All ascendant pieces have infusion slots, infused ascendant gear has a +5 agony resist bonus, that all. The level 10 pieces have the exact same stats, same infusion slots but miss the +5 resist.

Endless quiver:

+17 Precision
+17 Toughness
+24 Condition Damage
+32 Condition Damage
+18 Precision
+18 Toughness
Unused Offensive Infusion Slot

Endless quiver (infused):

+17 Precision
+17 Toughness
+24 Condition Damage
+32 Condition Damage
+18 Precision
+18 Toughness
+5 Agony Resistance
Unused Offensive Infusion Slot

Phy.2913:

They said Ascended gear will be added to WvW, so you wont have any reason to not have this gear. Unless Anet goes full kitten and adds the pve gear long before the WvW gear, but that would be beyond stupid.

You mean the way it is right now?