Guild Wars 2

I want to get a better grasp of what state the cost of ascended materials are in. If you have your ascended gear, check the prices and comment about your thoughts before and after you check the price. If you are crafting ascended now, what are your thoughts on the cost/amount of materials. For me, ascended materials seem inflated in price.

Not to hard just time gate to craft some thing for ascended is pain. Also ascended not need for most part of game so time limit no problem. I do not have problem with cost/time.

It is top gear so not suppose to be cheap or easy.

cost – for me none because i gained more than i spent (cause fracts)
I got 4 sets. ( for rev, war druid, ele) and i only actually made one (around 2 years ago, so i couldn’t tell you a cost). the other 3 came from fractals, and raids from the last 3 months.

It’s not hard to get asc. Daily fracts + daily Teq, (and maybe TT) + weekly raids (not even kills but if you even go and cap your shards) Just so many ways to earn asc for free. i get 1-2 asc boxes a week.

No it isn’t. It really isn’t.

Dragonite Ore, Bloodstone Dust and Emp Shards are all trivially easy to get in Silverwastes chest farms.
Gold is not hard to get; farming runs in t2-t4 zones produce massive amounts of cash.

This is even assuming you’re crafting it. If you get lucky and get an ascended box, you get free gear and didn’t pay a thing. Maybe pay a couple gold to get it swapped to stats that you like.

SproutJr.4802:

For me, ascended materials seem inflated in price.

They are inflated due to one-time costs associated with guild upgrading, not long-term costs associated with getting multiple sets of ascended gear.

I don’t think it’s expensive to get 1 set.

But it is really expensive if you get multiple sets for alt. Or worse, get multiple sets of the same thing just to put different rune and sigil in it.

All mine were drops… I have 2 tabs of rings, 8 weapons, 2 sets of armor (Rabid and Zerk) and 4 armor chests

Armor sure is. The drop rate is pure 0% in my 9000 fractal runs and 1,000,000 boss kills in 100k+ hours of playtime. The crafting price is around 20 trillion atm.

Armor is an investment. Don’t go for it unless you’re really sure you want it, or you have a bank full of silk.

Weapons are totally doable since they mostly use Deldrimor and Spiritwood which are the easiest two to farm.

Trinkets are easy. Fractals and laurels hand your amulet/rings right to you. Accessories are a little pricier, but honestly I’ve been on the world boss train for years now and I can’t say 100 ectos was much of a loss.

Ascended gear is in a pretty good spot as far as acquisition. There is one problem, though: The only real way to get a weapon is to craft it. You don’t have other alternatives. In a game that’s otherwise as open and freeform as this one, that is not good.

I’d like to see drop chances be a bit better. Not enough to make a heavy dent in the market, but enough so that those of us who think crafting is worse than self-flagellation might actually be able to get a drop every now and then.

Kalarchis.8635:

Armor is an investment. Don’t go for it unless you’re really sure you want it, or you have a bank full of silk.

Weapons are totally doable since they mostly use Deldrimor and Spiritwood which are the easiest two to farm.

Trinkets are easy. Fractals and laurels hand your amulet/rings right to you. Accessories are a little pricier, but honestly I’ve been on the world boss train for years now and I can’t say 100 ectos was much of a loss.

Just doing the easy guild missions like trek or bounty when they come up is probably less of a time commitment than than world bosses especially with the bosses being on a fixed schedule now.

Too annoying to get would be more accurate

EDIT: Though as someone who tends to have floods and famines of play time, when you can’t play a lot, it can become ridiculously difficult, obscenely expensive, and even impossible if you get far enough behind.

So far I’ve crafted 3 sets of light, 2 sets of medium and 1 set of heavy ascended. In between I was spending laurels getting asc trinkets for these toons and crafting ascended backpirces and weapons for multiple chatacters. The hardest part was running out of laurels and bloodstone, which oddly seemed to happen alot, nothing else just bloodstone…during this time I’ve only ever gotten 1 asc weapon drop, 2 asc armor chests and a few ring drops (all from wvw). But, I spent the better part of 2 years in there and the drop rates have definately gone down.

The pain was worth it in the end, ascended armor is a big boost, full ascended is even biger boost, but it is not needed for most parts of the game.

If you do craft it, it’s better to concentrate on 1 set at a time. And if you go for weapons as well, think about weapons you can use on multiple toons just in case you get bored with 1.

They drop quite often in Fractals but it is an absolute horror – especially for new players – to craft them. It was okay’ish before HOT update but with the almost complete lack of leather acquisition through normal gameplay imo I give this system a medal of dysfunctional idiocracy. Never ever have I seen a game where you need low tier materials to craft the highest tier gear. Especially not if you can’t get them through normal play.

You can play for weeks without using any craft and still you aren’t able to craft one single elonian leather be cause the acquisition of the low tier leather (or linen) is so lackluster.

Yes, there are karma merchants, yes there is the TP. But imho this is a stupid way to get it. This isn’t legendary, you should get max stats gear slowly – granted – but not nigh impossibly by just playing the game.

It’s a lot, but not expensive. What else would I spend my shiny gold on

Ascended gear is trivially easy to get. Log-in rewards, guild missions, fractals, and optionally wvw will get you the currency you need to buy ascended gear.

Ascended armor has an insignificant stat increase on it, and crafting it is an intentional tax on the section of the population that somehow likes spending months on new equipment. The only place it’s required is high-level fractals, and only because you can slot agony resist into it.

It is the one thing I actually care about working towards, and if it was any easier I would be done with this game a long time ago. I think it’s fine.

Conncept.7638:

Too annoying to get would be more accurate

EDIT: Though as someone who tends to have floods and famines of play time, when you can’t play a lot, it can become ridiculously difficult, obscenely expensive, and even impossible if you get far enough behind.

That’s a good point I forgot to mention. What if you don’t have a lot of time, and don’t farm t2-t4 mats to sell them? I can see it being reasonable if you play a lot, but I can’t. Plus I’m trying to get my elite specialization weapon, but I need to be in HoT and you don’t get much gold there

5 small remarks:

• yes it’s pricey, but if you craft materials when availabel, and just take your time theend is less gains from mat sales and in the end all the ascnededs you need.
• biggest hurdle is actually levelling your profession to 500 as this part reall y doesn’t seem to pay off (seem worthwhile) a whole lot… Then again this will allow you a lot of options later.
• You used to have induvidual recipe’s for all armor stats but, with the introduction of the anthology of heroes at Miyani, Stat swap is possible so you should only focus and learn the cheapers way to craft armors you can then jut switch all. (Old 3 stats is definately cheaper to craft compared to the newer 4 stat options.)
  I prefer Sinister. But there is no real problem crafting something else.
• You do not NEED ascneded armor unles doing fractals 50+, RAIDS or being a WvW only player, having ascended Weapons however is preferable on power (and Power/ Condi) hybrid builds… condi really doesn’t matter that much..
• Having and ascneded armor will raise your ARMOR rating (not your toughness) in some intances and it an cause you to get aggro when running with 4 other ppl in full exotics. (also potentially causing your to get killed before they do). so consider the reasons to aquire your armor.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

5 small remarks:

• yes it’s pricey, but if you craft materials when availabel, and just take your time theend is less gains from mat sales and in the end all the ascnededs you need.
• biggest hurdle is actually levelling your profession to 500 as this part reall y doesn’t seem to pay off (seem worthwhile) a whole lot… Then again this will allow you a lot of options later.
• You used to have induvidual recipe’s for all armor stats but, with the introduction of the anthology of heroes at Miyani, Stat swap is possible so you should only focus and learn the cheapers way to craft armors you can then jut switch all. (Old 3 stats is definately cheaper to craft compared to the newer 4 stat options.)
  I prefer Sinister. But there is no real problem crafting something else.
• You do not NEED ascneded armor unles doing fractals 50+, RAIDS or being a WvW only player, having ascended Weapons however is preferable on power (and Power/ Condi) hybrid builds… condi really doesn’t matter that much..
• Having and ascneded armor will raise your ARMOR rating (not your toughness) in some intances and it an cause you to get aggro when running with 4 other ppl in full exotics. (also potentially causing your to get killed before they do). so consider the reasons to aquire your armor.

I want to raid, and my guild is instituting some heavy requirements. I can only be missing 2 pieces of armor at most, but the requirement is for discussion in raid section. Plus I enjoy fractals.

nothing is expensive in this game. If you are missing 2 piece just farm 1 hour a day and you’ll be done in 2 weeks.

What’s expensive is there are so many things you could “possibly” get. If you just give up everything else and focus on 1 set of ascended armor it is pretty cheap.

laokoko.7403:

nothing is expensive in this game. If you are missing 2 piece just farm 1 hour a day and you’ll be done in 2 weeks.

What’s expensive is there are so many things you could “possibly” get. If you just give up everything else and focus on 1 set of ascended armor it is pretty cheap.

It’s expensive for your first character since you have to level several crafting disciplines, and it takes a little bit of time to learn where the most profitable places to farm are, especially as you’re probably discovering the rest of the game as well and have plenty of other things to do (living story, leveling your spec, dungeons, fractals, etc, etc). Yet I don’t think it’s an issue. Getting max equipment in GW2 is a bit grindy, but it’s nothing compared to most of the other MMO. And if you want everything as soon as you hit the max level, there’s still GW1 for you.

Now once you know the game, getting ascended gear becomes really easy. An ascended sword or pistol for instance costs 70 to 100g to craft, depending on whether you craft the deldrimor ingots / spiritwood or not. Some farm this amount of money in one day in SW… And even for more casual players, you’re right, it shouldn’t take more than one week per piece.

It’s not only that it is hard to make ascended armor, it’s a kittening obscenity for new players to level just through the mid tiers. As already mentioned, the use of low level tier mats for highest level gear to increase demands into interstellar space is the biggest failure I can imagine in an MMO market balancing. What the hell was Mr. Smith thinking, really. You kitten up all the poor new players when they are somewhere between 200-300 – especially if the go for leather crafting.

Hard? No

Time gated? Yes

Annoying as kitten if you’re trying to farm for it? Yes

Costs an arm, a leg, and your first born child if you’re trying to skip the farming? Most definitely

Required? Debatable, Situational

Am I personally broken enough to drive myself batty trying to deck out all of my characters with it? Abso-kittening-lutely.

SproutJr.4802:

Conncept.7638:

Too annoying to get would be more accurate

EDIT: Though as someone who tends to have floods and famines of play time, when you can’t play a lot, it can become ridiculously difficult, obscenely expensive, and even impossible if you get far enough behind.

That’s a good point I forgot to mention. What if you don’t have a lot of time, and don’t farm t2-t4 mats to sell them? I can see it being reasonable if you play a lot, but I can’t. Plus I’m trying to get my elite specialization weapon, but I need to be in HoT and you don’t get much gold there

Yeah, if you have less playtime, the last thing you want to do is log in to the same area and do the same thing with your playtime every single day, because ANet has just flat out decided that X content is valuable for working towards your ascended gear and Y content is not. Especially when Y content takes up 90% of the game.

Wouldn’t be a problem if they stuck to their original plan of making ascended optional for everywhere but fractals, but it’s blatantly obvious between the higher attack speeds that nullify dodge, the higher HP more evasive enemies, and the content of raids that ANet balanced this expansion with ascended gear in mind, and will continue to do so in spite of their previous promises.

A small hint. The chest you open give the same rewards regardless of your level. The blue/green/yellow gear drops are a level based on the opener. If you open chest at lower levels, you get lower level mats when you salvage. Try running a chest train, or save all the chest from HoT you get, then open then on a level 45/55 toon. You can probably just sell the mats to buy the ascended ones you need. Or you can open them on the toon that gives you the tier you need to craft with.

They just need to bring the fractal drops back in line to where the had been pre-HoT.

Add another daily chest with 75-100 that has no chance at rings/regular skins, only has a chance at bonus gold/Ascended Weapon Chest/Armor Chest/Gold Skins.

SproutJr.4802:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

5 small remarks:

• yes it’s pricey, but if you craft materials when availabel, and just take your time theend is less gains from mat sales and in the end all the ascnededs you need.
• biggest hurdle is actually levelling your profession to 500 as this part reall y doesn’t seem to pay off (seem worthwhile) a whole lot… Then again this will allow you a lot of options later.
• You used to have induvidual recipe’s for all armor stats but, with the introduction of the anthology of heroes at Miyani, Stat swap is possible so you should only focus and learn the cheapers way to craft armors you can then jut switch all. (Old 3 stats is definately cheaper to craft compared to the newer 4 stat options.)
  I prefer Sinister. But there is no real problem crafting something else.
• You do not NEED ascneded armor unles doing fractals 50+, RAIDS or being a WvW only player, having ascended Weapons however is preferable on power (and Power/ Condi) hybrid builds… condi really doesn’t matter that much..
• Having and ascneded armor will raise your ARMOR rating (not your toughness) in some intances and it an cause you to get aggro when running with 4 other ppl in full exotics. (also potentially causing your to get killed before they do). so consider the reasons to aquire your armor.

I want to raid, and my guild is instituting some heavy requirements. I can only be missing 2 pieces of armor at most, but the requirement is for discussion in raid section. Plus I enjoy fractals.

What a silly guild. Maybe find a guild that has sane equipment requirements, because ascended armor is not required for raids. Or, if you really like this one, build chat links for ascended versions of your build’s armor and just lie through your teeth.

Well I do expect ppl to be honest… If people are using DPS meters and/or stat checkers, either legal or most likely not, you could be blacklisted or kicked from your raid group, and or guild / comunity…, and it will be a bad move longterm…. it’s difficult enough to convince ppl you should be part of groups…

If something like this would sing around…. I am quite open minded I like buildvariety… I do not use checkers and consider ’m offensive tbh. but I have been kicked before for using water in traits on my zerk ele. and had flames for zealot armor on some characters as well… Luckily I noticed most ppl not minding a difference in play style… But I never did Raids anyways….

Just farming the mats seems slow and problematic, but tbh I have 6 armors now, and 9 pieces on 4 other characters, and close to 80 ascneded weapons… 79 I think, I still need to unlock the Ascendeds from the specialisations, I still need ~27 pieces for all characters i would like to give ascnededs…. but it has become a low priority long term goal…

1 hour a day of SW and 1 or 2 hours of CF a week….and daily fractals should provide ample income…

Here some actual numbers.

If you want to craft an ascended armor. Let’s take heavy armor for this exemple.

It will cost you 24.95 gold to reach 400 and 15.30gold for 500 in armorsmith. For a total of 40.25gold.

It will cost you 533.60 gold to buy everything with buy order and craft your armor. With daily cap on Deldrimor, Damask and Elonian, it will take you 25 days.

Farming this amount of gold at around 10 to 20gold per hour will take you between 60 and 29 hours depending on what’s your method.

If you want to get that armor from fractal 51+. We have limited amount of numbers so the probability are not that precise. But so far it seem that we have an average of 11.4% chance of getting an armor chest. With a population of 771 chest from KING’s numbers it give us a confidence interval of 3.5%. Meaning player should have between 7.9% and 14.9% chance of getting ascended armor. This mean that player should have 6 ascended armor chest after between 41 and 76 daily. At 30min per daily, it would take between 21 and 38 hours of fractal spread over 41 to 76 days to get a full armour. After that, you need to add the price to swap the stats. Of course those are stats. Someone could be unlucky.

Finally in raids. It will take you 1300 shards for a whole set. You can get 100 shards per week by raiding for 3-4 hours with the Map Reward bonus. So it will take 13 weeks and between 39 to 52 hours to get a full set. Not counting the chance of dropping ascended armor on your weekly.

Artanis.4963:

SproutJr.4802:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

5 small remarks:

• yes it’s pricey, but if you craft materials when availabel, and just take your time theend is less gains from mat sales and in the end all the ascnededs you need.
• biggest hurdle is actually levelling your profession to 500 as this part reall y doesn’t seem to pay off (seem worthwhile) a whole lot… Then again this will allow you a lot of options later.
• You used to have induvidual recipe’s for all armor stats but, with the introduction of the anthology of heroes at Miyani, Stat swap is possible so you should only focus and learn the cheapers way to craft armors you can then jut switch all. (Old 3 stats is definately cheaper to craft compared to the newer 4 stat options.)
  I prefer Sinister. But there is no real problem crafting something else.
• You do not NEED ascneded armor unles doing fractals 50+, RAIDS or being a WvW only player, having ascended Weapons however is preferable on power (and Power/ Condi) hybrid builds… condi really doesn’t matter that much..
• Having and ascneded armor will raise your ARMOR rating (not your toughness) in some intances and it an cause you to get aggro when running with 4 other ppl in full exotics. (also potentially causing your to get killed before they do). so consider the reasons to aquire your armor.

I want to raid, and my guild is instituting some heavy requirements. I can only be missing 2 pieces of armor at most, but the requirement is for discussion in raid section. Plus I enjoy fractals.

What a silly guild. Maybe find a guild that has sane equipment requirements, because ascended armor is not required for raids. Or, if you really like this one, build chat links for ascended versions of your build’s armor and just lie through your teeth.

It’s more that the guild hasn’t gotten comfortable and they think they need it. I plan on bringing it up. Remember that they haven’t killed Gorseval.

Thaddeus.4891:

Here some actual numbers.

If you want to craft an ascended armor. Let’s take heavy armor for this exemple.

It will cost you 24.95 gold to reach 400 and 15.30gold for 500 in armorsmith. For a total of 40.25gold.

It will cost you 533.60 gold to buy everything with buy order and craft your armor. With daily cap on Deldrimor, Damask and Elonian, it will take you 25 days.

Farming this amount of gold at around 10 to 20gold per hour will take you between 60 and 29 hours depending on what’s your method.

If you want to get that armor from fractal 51+. We have limited amount of numbers so the probability are not that precise. But so far it seem that we have an average of 11.4% chance of getting an armor chest. With a population of 771 chest from KING’s numbers it give us a confidence interval of 3.5%. Meaning player should have between 7.9% and 14.9% chance of getting ascended armor. This mean that player should have 6 ascended armor chest after between 41 and 76 daily. At 30min per daily, it would take between 21 and 38 hours of fractal spread over 41 to 76 days to get a full armour. After that, you need to add the price to swap the stats. Of course those are stats. Someone could be unlucky.

Finally in raids. It will take you 1300 shards for a whole set. You can get 100 shards per week by raiding for 3-4 hours with the Map Reward bonus. So it will take 13 weeks and between 39 to 52 hours to get a full set. Not counting the chance of dropping ascended armor on your weekly.

Thank you for providing us with this!

So far I have gathered that it’s not necessarily too hard to get, but for players without time to play quite a bit are at a big disadvantage. It seems that there are ways to farm for the mats, but the same ones are always mentioned and they aren’t the most fun. Requiring lower level mats puts players leveling crafting at a disadvantage due to the lack of ways for high level players to get them. Anything else of note?

SproutJr.4802:

So far I have gathered that it’s not necessarily too hard to get, but for players without time to play quite a bit are at a big disadvantage. It seems that there are ways to farm for the mats, but the same ones are always mentioned and they aren’t the most fun. Requiring lower level mats puts players leveling crafting at a disadvantage due to the lack of ways for high level players to get them. Anything else of note?

Well the thing is and I’m sure you already heard it. Ascended armor is not needed outside of hardcore content. You don’t need ascended armor in raid, but it is true that good luck finding a group if you don’t have it. But raid is an hardcore content. For the average group it will take between 5 and 20 hours to be decent at 1 boss. In the end there will be 9 boss for a total of 45 to 180 hours just to practice. So why 29 to 60 hours is too much, if you are prepare to spend 45 to 180 hours just to practice a content with constant wipe?

Same with Fractal. The vast majority if not everybody doing fractal are doing fractal 78+ only once. We are all doing our daily between level 51 to 77 so you really only need 109 AR and you get reach that with no ascended armor. You just gonna need 3 +11 and 2 +10 instead of 2 +11 and 3 +10. Really not a big difference.

So really. Ascended armor are only needed for hardcore content. Level 78+ fractal and Raids. So why ascended armor should be balance around casual player which won’t play fractal 78+ or raid anyway? Both of those things ask more time than to craft the armor in the first place anyway.

The only place, where ascended armor could be a problem would be in WvW roaming. But really the armor there don’t give you a big enough advantage to change the outcome of a fight. The more skilled player will win even if he have an exotic armor and fight a guy in ascended armor. If both player are equally skilled, then yes it could make the difference, but how many time you fight a equally skilled player in WvW in a 1vs1?

I don’t think it’s too difficult to get. I do think it’s too time consuming and resource intensive to craft.

I like to change up my builds fairly frequently. So in my case I’d finally get a set crafted and then after a week I’d find it useless for the new build I want to play; ultimately ascended would just sit in my bank collecting dust.

For my needs, I’m sticking with exotic for the foreseeable future. That’s plenty of gold sink for the way I play.

~EW

No

I would like to see more ascended drops from fractals again. The current level yields less ascended than the daily PVP rewards. Then again the RNG has never been my friend.

With the addition of HoT, you can potentially get everything you need without crafting.

If you roll an elite specialization and use the actual weapon as your main damage weapon, the specialization collections will give you an ascended weapon. The main incentive to take it is for the damage boost, so you can get away with having your offhand support weapon as just exotic.

If you don’t roll an elite spec or don’t use the elite’s weapon, you are kind of SoL and need to get one via leveling a weapon profession.

Trinkets are pretty easy. Rings are from fractal currency. An earring requires being in a guild that does all of it’s missions in a single week. Necklaces need laurels and some gold or you can do the new HoT story achievements. Most people run berserkers and Marauders is a competitve substitute; the Act 3 Story achievement gives you an ascended marauders necklace with utility slot and can be done in a few hours. If you run condi, you can do the Act 4 achievement for vipers, but it’s harder and requires a group.

The new legendary backpack makes getting an ascended backpack really easy. The first collection can be completed via low level fractals and crafting the ascended backpack itself is really cheap.

You can potentially get enough AR to do champ swamp runs without ever crafting armor, but it requires weapons, full set of trinkets with infused, fractal masteries and the very expensive +12 infusions as well as farming fractals for the +7 infusions. It’s not easy to do and if you already have a leveled crafting profession, you will most likely get all the materials you need to craft one or two armor pieces before you ever finish this out.

If you go that route, you don’t even need armor and can just farm champ swamp fractal runs to hopefully get your armor pieces from RNG. Only time that will change is if they change fractals to make doing anything beyond triple swamp champ fractals worth doing, thus providing an incentive to get more than 109 AR.

Thaddeus.4891:

SproutJr.4802:

So far I have gathered that it’s not necessarily too hard to get, but for players without time to play quite a bit are at a big disadvantage. It seems that there are ways to farm for the mats, but the same ones are always mentioned and they aren’t the most fun. Requiring lower level mats puts players leveling crafting at a disadvantage due to the lack of ways for high level players to get them. Anything else of note?

Well the thing is and I’m sure you already heard it. Ascended armor is not needed outside of hardcore content. You don’t need ascended armor in raid, but it is true that good luck finding a group if you don’t have it. But raid is an hardcore content. For the average group it will take between 5 and 20 hours to be decent at 1 boss. In the end there will be 9 boss for a total of 45 to 180 hours just to practice. So why 29 to 60 hours is too much, if you are prepare to spend 45 to 180 hours just to practice a content with constant wipe?

Same with Fractal. The vast majority if not everybody doing fractal are doing fractal 78+ only once. We are all doing our daily between level 51 to 77 so you really only need 109 AR and you get reach that with no ascended armor. You just gonna need 3 +11 and 2 +10 instead of 2 +11 and 3 +10. Really not a big difference.

So really. Ascended armor are only needed for hardcore content. Level 78+ fractal and Raids. So why ascended armor should be balance around casual player which won’t play fractal 78+ or raid anyway? Both of those things ask more time than to craft the armor in the first place anyway.

The only place, where ascended armor could be a problem would be in WvW roaming. But really the armor there don’t give you a big enough advantage to change the outcome of a fight. The more skilled player will win even if he have an exotic armor and fight a guy in ascended armor. If both player are equally skilled, then yes it could make the difference, but how many time you fight a equally skilled player in WvW in a 1vs1?

Yes, but in raids if you do a little a day you practice and benefit. If you don’t get the stuff you need for the timegated mats it sets you back. This is really just a nitpick though, but the other points in my post still hold true despite your good point. A lot of things need ascended mats, and the difference between things like precursor crafting and ascended armor and weapons is just the assembly. The ways to farm for the mats aren’t very enjoyable. People leveling crafting are being affected by the price of their mats because high level players don’t have reliable ways of getting leather and cloth, which drives the price up.

reikken.4961:

Ascended gear is in a pretty good spot as far as acquisition. There is one problem, though: The only real way to get a weapon is to craft it. You don’t have other alternatives. In a game that’s otherwise as open and freeform as this one, that is not good.

I have 1 word for you Tequatl.. Well I guess that’s a name not a word. I have several Ascended weapons from just doing boss battles every day I have a few Teq hoards and some others. Now that you can change stats in the forge there’s no reason not to have an ascended weapon. It takes some patience and luck to get a drop but it’s not like it never happens. Usually 1 or 2 Ascended drops each Teq fight and that’s only the ones who announce it.

Akrasia.5469:

reikken.4961:

Ascended gear is in a pretty good spot as far as acquisition. There is one problem, though: The only real way to get a weapon is to craft it. You don’t have other alternatives. In a game that’s otherwise as open and freeform as this one, that is not good.

I have 1 word for you Tequatl.. Well I guess that’s a name not a word. I have several Ascended weapons from just doing boss battles every day I have a few Teq hoards and some others. Now that you can change stats in the forge there’s no reason not to have an ascended weapon. It takes some patience and luck to get a drop but it’s not like it never happens. Usually 1 or 2 Ascended drops each Teq fight and that’s only the ones who announce it.

True, but what if RNG screws you over? As with many things left to chance, it can feel like you may never get it. Thats why they added precursor crafting, but some of the problems found in ascended crafting are starting to show there as well.

Do fractals, it’s the all-in-one raid preparation :

- Ascended rings/armor/weapons
- Lots of gold
- Polishes up your skills for raiding
- Only needs 30-45 mins a day if you only concentrate on the 56-67-77 swamps for the champ daily chest.

quite honestly you are better of mining than doing teq for ascended weapon.

that being said mining is pretty boring. the side benefit of teq is you get karma and spirit shard from champ bag.

but purely speaking, you’ll get ascended weapon much much faster from just mining

Introduction of ascended was a travesty.
It’s so obscene a mechanic, so convoluted, so poorly crafted excuse for resource sink that it should have never get into game.
Hard? No. Mind-numbing, unimaginative and poorly thought out? You bet!

That moment when you realize that you’re one laurel short of buying a recipe and a next laurel spoon feed is couple of days away will truly make you appreciate the feature.

When someone tries to explain it to you “oh it’s just for fractals, stat difference is trivial anyway” ask them what was wrong with putting more sockets into exotics, if the stat difference was so trivial.

Maybe I’m showing my age, but I always compare ascended to the legendary armors from vanilla WoW. I feel as a system it asks much less of a player than MMOs before it.

GW2 you can get ascended from crafting, drops in fractals, drops from some world bosses, completing collections. They are max stats and easily stat swapped, so your grind ends when you get that piece of equipment. You can also easily give your equipment to an alt if you decide you want to try a different class.

Vanilla WoW you get your legendary armor from raids only. That meant finding 39 other players who have 3-5 hours to run the raid. There will be 1-2 items dropping from each of the 5-6 bosses in the raid, and if you were lucky enough for your class specific armor to drop, you would be rolling “need” against the other players of the same class for that piece. As you can only run a raid once per week, fully gearing your main took 3+ months if you were lucky and able to constantly raid. Each piece is also soulbound so forget about giving it to alts. And when you finally equip yourself with Tier X legendaries, Blizz then releases the next raid/expansion, and you start the whole process to get your Tier X+1 equipment. Not fun at all and I burned out in 6 months with only a handful of Tier 2 and 3 gear to show for my efforts.

Not only that, but during my non-raiding days, I really struggled to find anything to do… lesser dungeons had poor rewards, there was always other players camping valuable resource nodes, there were no open world PvE events worth doing, PvP was PvE-gear dependent so I was always owned by players who had more raid equipment than myself, crafting was completely redundant. All I did was grind for bandages and healing pots for use during my raid days.

(I know WoW changed from 40-man to 10-20man raids, but otherwise AFAIK the system is still the same. I’ve got no experience in the modern WoW expansions… maybe someone can enlighten me)

Yes ascended armor is time consuming if you hate PvE farming. If you want to gear out more than 3 characters of different weights (heavy, light, medium) prepare for a long process or a large premium on timegated materials.

The change after HoT makes me feel bad for anyone trying to make ascended armor. Damask patches require leather.

Ascended armor & weapons should have been given exotic stats but with the agony resistance slots instead of +5 stats IMO

Also ascended weapons/armor should have been normalized to exotic in WvW ; the alternative is to have them available t the WvW vendor for badges+gold.

Too many players use ascended as a crutch.

Well if I need 150 AR I need 3-4 armor pieces minimum to get to the AR… Crutch? no…

Saying ppl cannot play well so they need asc? well I think most ppl have stated you can do any content except high level fractals and raids or maybe end level WvW in rare or exotics. you’ll lose about… 12-25% dps… that’s marginal I agree.

Yes. But it’s because of how the game is made. When you’re level 80 you no longer get drops of lower level materials so you have to hope you got enough through leveling. But ironically you level too fast to have any hope of achieving that for a full set of armor which forces you to buy it. Mining etc. is not problematic however since platinum’s not leaving its designated maps any time soon.

Since a portion of the materials become unavailable during regular gameplay it’s an awkward design choice. You cannot mine silk or leather. Obviously this is less of an issue for metals and subsequently heavy armor.

SproutJr.4802:

A lot of things need ascended mats, and the difference between things like precursor crafting and ascended armor and weapons is just the assembly. The ways to farm for the mats aren’t very enjoyable. People leveling crafting are being affected by the price of their mats because high level players don’t have reliable ways of getting leather and cloth, which drives the price up.

True. With HoT the demand for low level materials skyrocket and so was their price. Anet really need to increase the ways to get those mat for level 80 character.

That said, the effect on crafting cost is really small. Yes the price of level crafting 0-400 almost double for most crafting profession except jeweler and cooking. But they went from about 10-15gold to 25-30 gold. That’s still really really small and not a problem at all.

So you are right that the price of low level material is a problem right now, but it’s not a problem for levelling crafting. My bet is that you level up your crafting by yourself, which probably cost you a lot more than if you were following a guide like on gw2crafts.net

It’s obnoxious to get. Last night, I just idly finished a leather coat and and dropped several gold in thread and other finishing costs.

But, it’s the last coat I’ll ever need, so I just shrug and deal with it.

If I were very, incredibly eager to MUST HAVE BEST IN SLOT, I’d be really sore, but I’m not all that eager, so it’s fine. (At least I don’t need a precursor for ascended. Just sayin’.)