Guild Wars 2

I keep seeing references to +1% when comparing exotic to ascended gear. WHen I review the respective backpacks, add up the stats and index ascendant to exotic, I arrive at over 20%. I recognize that if you use full base stats as the denominator, then it’s less, possibly 1%, but the claim that the items side by side only differ by 1% is misleading.

If you compare them item by item ascended gear is ~8% better than exotics when it comes to the important stats. But if you compare a full exotic build to a build with ascended back piece and two rings the ascended build is only ~1% better.

We’ll have to see how the armor/weapons look stat-wise in order to make comparisons.

And whether or not the versions with “rune/sigil abilities” that players would normally use are available is a big factor as well. If the only armor sets available were Dolyak/Lich/Divinity, and you couldn’t get the effect of any other runes, some players might be less likely to wear them.

So even if the armor comes to a grand total of 5% higher stats, we’ll have to weigh whether it will be worth the loss of runes/sigils for your particular build.

Only time will tell for sure.

When I saw the backpacks even without infusions (which does have base stats) it was closer to 20% item to item. Just curious why I got infracted for saying the items side by side showed more than a 1% increase in total stats.