Guild Wars 2

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.

That’s incorrect. Ascended weapon chests drop at a pretty decent rate in fractals, world bosses, and PVP.

polarbear.2497:

That’s correct. Ascended weapon chests drop at a pretty decent rate in fractals, world bosses, and PVP.

Fixed that for you, as far as I know, doing daily fractals and WB I got 0 ascended box so far. 100% of my ascended weapons and armors came from crafting.

Riss.1536:

polarbear.2497:

That’s correct. Ascended weapon chests drop at a pretty decent rate in fractals, world bosses, and PVP.

Fixed that for you, as far as I know, doing daily fractals and WB I got 0 ascended box so far.

To be fair, just because you haven’t seen a drop does not make my statement incorrect. I get one every week, at least, as do most of my guild members.

And by the way, it’s poor etiquette to edit a quote of someone’s post.

Riss.1536:

polarbear.2497:

That’s correct. Ascended weapon chests drop at a pretty decent rate in fractals, world bosses, and PVP.

Fixed that for you, as far as I know, doing daily fractals and WB I got 0 ascended box so far.

Yeah… definitely thinking a player confusing personal experience with the norm.

I know players who have thousands of fractal runs, thousands of hours in PvP, and couldn’t even count the number of world events they’ve completed, who have never had a single ascended drop. And not just one, but a noticeable sample.

Obviously they drop, but the the drop rate research more than supports that they do so at a low enough drop rate that it is very plausible to play the game for any amount of time and still never get one. And that’s just not okay in my opinion.

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.

Actually if you own HoT the elite speicalization weapons are pretty easy to get without crafting. You don’t have a choice of every weapon but you can get staff, greatsword and a few others.

Conncept.7638:

Riss.1536:

polarbear.2497:

That’s correct. Ascended weapon chests drop at a pretty decent rate in fractals, world bosses, and PVP.

Fixed that for you, as far as I know, doing daily fractals and WB I got 0 ascended box so far.

Yeah… definitely thinking a player confusing personal experience with the norm.

I know players who have thousands of fractal runs, thousands of hours in PvP, and couldn’t even count the number of world events they’ve completed, who have never had a single ascended drop. And not just one, but a noticeable sample.

Obviously they drop, but the the drop rate research more than supports that they do so at a low enough drop rate that it is very plausible to play the game for any amount of time and still never get one. And that’s just not okay in my opinion.

No, not confusing personal experience with the norm – I am basing my opinions on empirical evidence gathered from a large guild. As with all RNG-related issues, however, your mileage will vary.

Trinkets bar the back piece was fairly easy.

First armor set was hard. However I kept all the random ascended chest I got over the time I’ve played. My friend recently told me I could change the stats through a mystic forge recipe. So in under a day I had 3/6 pieces of my armor, a 4th one from lumi armor collection, and 3 ascended weapons with stats I needed.

Also the longer you play the game the more stuff you tend to collect. I splurged on ascended aquabreather yesterday just for funsies because I had a few ascended mats I made daily because I was so used to doing so.

SproutJr.4802:

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.

Yes

i think they should have kept the armor phylosophy of guildwars 1.
Then there would be no armor treadmill since all are equal.

im a very casual solo player(mostly) , and i still have to craft my last ascended armor
piece for my necro.
My other 2 toons dont even have ascended armor.

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.

Yes, so if you do teq every day, you can count on few drops per year. That’s definitely good rate, right?

If you look at it objectively, ascended gear isn’t hard at all to get. Either by crafting it, or dropping it from fractal or buying from raid. It should take about 30 to 60 hours to get a full set of ascended armor. Which in my opinion is about right. What is the exact number of hours it should be will vary from one person to another so we can’t satisfy everybody. That said, they could improve the balance between some method of acquirering ascended gear and add more ways because not everybody play the same content.

1) Fractal 51+ is the only place where you have a reasonable way to get it. We used to have decent chance in level 30, 40 and 50, but that’s no longer the case. They really should add a daily level 76-100 with a higher chance than now and improve the chance in at least daily 26-50.

2) Crafting price skyrocketed with all the new sinks for ascended material (aka precursor crafting). They need to give ways for level 80 to get those low level material and to drop the price of these material a bit.

3) I don’t have data on the droprate for PvP and WvW, but I did quite a bit of both. PvP drop rate seem decent. Not extraordinary, but decent. While WvW from what I remember had a terribad droprate for ascended gear. But maybe it’s because you level up not that quick in normal WvW. Maybe that the droprate is good when you do EotM and rank up so much quicker. Of course, like i said, I don’t have data so it may just be my good or bad luck here.

4) Open World sources. That’s where some work need to be done. There is very very few source of ascended gear in Open World, especially in HoT, a place where all maps are level 80. It should still take 30-60 hours of open world to get a full ascended armor, but at least people should have the option to farm in the content they prefer.

For a new or returning player? Yes it’s absolutely hard to get. You have to grind materials and gold. It’s very demanding on players who want to raid, especially new ones.

I crafted my ascended armor and weapons over the span of 6 months, literally making one component a day, spending 20 or 30 gold here and there.

Now that there is an actual demand for ascended gear; an actual benefit for have that small boost to your satas, people are grinding hard to obtain it quickly only to find it nearly impossible to do without a large saving of gold and materials.

A large supply of crafting materials and gold are something no new players are going to have, which further divides the gap between new and returning players and veterans.

A gap in the player base is never a good thing for MMO longevity.