Guild Wars 2

The November 2012 patch – which introduced Ascended Gear – is the most controversial one in the game’s history. It represents a line that has been crossed, and cannot be uncrossed – a betrayal of the horizontal progression crowd that did little to satisfy the vertical.

Undoing the system, however, is an impossibility which would cause even more harm to the community. There is only one way to improve on it – and that is to address it’s underlying issue.

What is the primary issue of the ascended tier? It’s not inclusive.

The number of ways that Ascended Gear can be obtained is simply too restricted.

What is the system? Trinkets aside, Ascended Gear is obtained through either expensive (and in the case of armor – ABSURDLY expensive) crafting or RNG. And by RNG I’m not referring to a realistic likelihood. No, I’ve seen it referred to as being comparable to the chances of being struck by lightning – and then you’ve got to be struck by the specific kind (stats) of lightning that you want. Multiply this for each piece of the armor and weapons that you want.

The way to fix the Ascended Gear system is to make it more accessible.

By this, I am NOT referring to reducing the cost/effort required to obtain it. I am simply referring to a need to broaden the acquisition system such that all playstyles are rewarded and all playstyles can be used to obtain this gear – realistically, and without the need to craft or to be luckier than a lottery winner.

So, with that said, I’m going to cover individual ways that it should be obtainable.

A new Ascended Mat – Ascension Energy

Crafted by throwing 250 of each Ascended Mat (Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, and Empyreal shards) into the Mystic Forge along with an Augur’s Stone. This material, in larger numbers, is used as a Vision Crystal substitute for non-crafting Ascended paths.

Gifts of Ascension are now obtainable through Dungeon Tokens, Laurels, Badges of Honor, and Karma.

FotM would remain the best source of them, due to prices on the other methods. This is a foundational change meant to increase the importance of these underused Gifts and broaden the system.

Dungeon gear should have an upgrade path into Ascended Tier.

- Obtain a piece of the dungeon gear that you want with the stats that you want.
- Obtain a Gift of the same dungeon that gear is from (ie: Gift of Ascalon).
- Obtain a Gift of Ascension.
- Obtain several Ascension Energies.

Combine these in the Mystic Forge to upgrade your dungeon gear into the Ascended Tier.

Ideally, this would come with a new (or modified) skin, but it does not need to.

Karma Gear should be able to upgrade

In a similar fashion, use the Mystic Forge to combine a piece of the desired Karma Gear with a stack of Obsidian Shards, a Gift of Ascension, and several Ascension Energies.

WvW armor should be able to upgrade

Use the Mystic Forge to combine a piece of the desired WvW gear with a Gift of Heroes, a Gift of Ascension, and several Ascension Energies.

Introducing – Guild Mission Armor

Unlike current Guild Armor which is easy to obtain and is nothing more than a reskin with the ability to wear the guild emblem, this variation is its own, highly attractive skin set (with the same ability to display the emblem). It is obtained through Guild Commendations and Gold and it (along with the similar Guild Weapons) can then be upgraded into the Ascended Tier via a similar method. Combine it with a Gift of Loyalty, which is obtained via 10 Guild Commendations, a Gift of Ascension, and Ascension Energies.

Adding more ways will drop the prices for ascended considerably. You underestimate how easy it is to get a lot of those other currencies as well as how many have a lot just collecting dust.

These are all solid ideas. Badges and Karma are a bit troublesome because they are just simply overflowing.

I think the RNG issue is also a pretty bad one, but I am not sure how to solve it. Maybe fractals could drop ascended components like bolts of damask so it becomes less of an “all or nothing” thing.

I also think that ascended earrings should also be (rare) drops from chests.

Also, what do people think about 4 exotics in forge giving the possibility of ascended, or being able to mystic forge ascended jewelery into a new one?

ArchonWing.9480:

These are all solid ideas. Badges and Karma are a bit troublesome because they are just simply overflowing.

I think the RNG issue is also a pretty bad one, but I am not sure how to solve it. Maybe fractals could drop ascended components like bolts of damask so it becomes less of an “all or nothing” thing.

I also think that ascended earrings should also be (rare) drops from chests.

Also, what do people think about 4 exotics in forge giving the possibility of ascended, or being able to mystic forge ascended jewelery into a new one?

Adding ascended gear to 4-exo forges would probably cause more complaints than not. It would (either in actually or perception) reduce the likelihood of precursor drops. Obviously not an issue for armor, but for weapons….

Ayrilana.1396:

Adding more ways will drop the prices for ascended considerably. You underestimate how easy it is to get a lot of those other currencies as well as how many have a lot just collecting dust.

Yes, it will drop prices. Not directly, but through a simple reduction in the demand for cloth materials. And that’s a good thing.

Also, the timegates on those currencies are pretty similar to the timegates on ascended gear. Ascended gear can be obtained rather quickly if you’re willing to sell your soul to the proper gold farm spots. Badges of Honor are an exception, but WvW players could use a cookie every now and then.

Farming EotM can get you quite a large amount of badges and karma very quickly. Ascended gear are top tier and not mandatory except for high level fractals.

I don’t see anything wrong with the current prices. I’ve crafted several weapons and a couple sets with plans to make more.

You missed the point of ascended gear (armor/weapons) altogether.

It was meant only for two purposes and nothing more:

1. Material sink to keep economy from crashing to coppers
2. Agony mechanism in FotM

That’s it.
Any more ways to acquire armor/weapons would void point 1. So no.

I have to agree with Korossive. I never found them too difficult to obtain, and am working on my second set. The cost isn’t that much if you are putting in the work to farm and gather your mats, instead of buying everything off the TP (which btw, only leads to prices increasing, as there is higher demand). It IS time consuming, yes, but thats the only negative side to it. So unless you are wanting it NOW for whatever reason, even the time gate isn’t much of a deterant.

Anet has to come up with rewarding systems, which reward also players for playing alot with alts, so that players also have a good intention to not focus only on one single character, but instead focus on multiple ones and that also to the point, that people have a real intention to buy extra for such better rewards addiotinal character slots to improve the rewarding factor of that system, that rewards the player for alting.

Example:

Play within a Week with more than 3 different Characters over xx hours and your Account gets some kind of Special Boon for like the next 72hours or so .. like a massive decreased *Time Gating down to 8% of what would be normal, so that instead of beign able to craft an item just every 24 hours, you would be able to craft an item basically nearly every 2 and a half hours then.

Time Gatign is the most horrible thing, Anet ever could have added to the game, it adds ZERO fun, its just totally annoying as peep and just only same as much frustrating, that Anet enforces upon us daily this totally pointless artificial slowdown, just so that those ascended materials are kept have artifial high in their price.
I can understand the reason behind it, but 24h is way too much. 2h would have been more than enough. Anet seems to forget, that people must also sleep, work or have other things to do, or do in general other thigns also in the game, other than 24h crafting all day long (which is boring to hell also – would be more entertaining, if we could at least also see animations of our characters actually really crafting, what we want)

But in general I aree, ascended stuff is way too restricted.

There needs to be options to gain also Ascended Items from:

• Dungeon Tokens (New Dungeon Weapon /Armor Sets with new Skins for a significant amount more of Tokens)
• Badges of Honor (together with Gold Costs/ Laurels/ Ectos like buying Ascended Accessoires)
• Refining Recipes to become able to Upgrade Item Rarity (from Exotic to Ascended)
• Mystic Forge Upgrades (Put in an Exotic with some other specific items) to have a chance to upgrade it to exotic or to receive 2 random multiple exotics back in the style of Legend of Zelda, throw somethign weak into the magical fairy pool and get it magically enhanced back if the fairies like you or you gave them the right items)
• Dungeon Rewards in general should give players for doing a dungeon (dungeon reward pve tracks) certain guaranteed repeatable rewards for doing those dungeons a specific amount of times, like for example doing Honor of the Waves like 50,100,150,250,500 times should reward you with guaranteed rewards that significantly help a player out in gettign ascended stuff/legendaries, because such an amount of effort should be really rewarded also significantly. The dungeon tokens alone in itself are lame as Anet also has’t doen anythign over the last 2 years to improve the dungeon rewards for tokens at all to invigorate also the incentive of doing them.
  Sure, the dungeoneer collection stuff helps, but not for very long, when there come more and more rewarding places like the silver wastes ect. in the future.

If there would be Ascended PvP Reward Tracks, peopel surely would also pvp more.

World Bosses like Tequatl and the Trio Wurm must become alot more rewarding in regard of their ascended items. Those two bosses need to receive a token based reward system, so that we get away here from their ridiculous RNG crap, where player A can get a sunless weapon after liek the first Tequatl Kill and player B gets none of that after like thousands of Tequatl Kilsl cause of ridiculous bad luck fro mthis stupid gamble wards RNG system with like korean asia grinder style ultra low 0,0001% drop chances for items in this game, which are with like 300% MF then still just only 0,0301% drop chance havign nearly 0 effect on increasing your luck to get what you want…

If this game ever wants to get back its alt friendlyness it once had (and for sure also regain back alot of players which leaved the game), ANet has to make fascendec items more accessible.

Also in regard of WVW ranks, there need to be guaranteed ascended item rewards for rechign specific wvw ranks.
Its ridiculous if you reach like WvW rank 500, 1000, 1500 and far more, if you get then just only a laughable 20 silver and two greens…. to the point, that it feels totally insulting towards the player which has made up so much efforts to reach such a high rank, to get then rewarded just only with garbage and an amount of money, that you can get instantly from sellign just 1 single guaranteed rare drop from a beginner area word boss like the shadow behemoth!!

Actually hitting the buttons to craft takes like 2 minutes while gathering the mats to do the crafting takes about 100 hours. And you can spend those 100ish hours in any part of the game to get gold to buy the mats you need. I dont see how it could be any more accessible.

Id be all for some token for getting specific armor pieces from high level fractals or something challenging, but this just seems like a crafting complaint thread in disguise.

If you could get 100% ascended with dungeon tokens or by zerging eotm then no one would need any gold ever again and the economy would collapse (its already struggling enough as is).

@ Korossive:

if thats what you say would be realyl the case, then Anet wouldn never ever have had to raise the stats from Ascended Equipment over that for Exotics, if all that Anet intended with them would have been only them being material sinks.

Then it would have been just also alot easier to make them just only special exotics that are labeled as “Ascended” for havign their FotM special affects and mostly also special unique skins, that you’d be only able to receive with these items.

That alone would have been enough to ensure, that those items would be an item sink, together with making them receiveable only through crafting, because they can be only a material sink, if they aren’t obtainable also by any other ways.
But again a point that speaks agaisnt your theory, because ascneded items actualyl are receiveable also without crafting, thus they aren’t a very effective material sink, because the sink is practially bypassable, if you are just lucky to get what you want from loot rewards.

All what ascended stuff actually mostly did only is peep ing off alot of players, which led to a huge community exodus and makign the game alot more alt unfriendly, than it was before, if you actually intent to play FotM effectively with more than just only your main character, due to Agony Resitance being curently a terrible bad thought out system, that doesn’t work as an account based feature, which it should have been working like from begin on, just like the accoutn based Magic Find %, so should work Agony resistance also accountwide based on the total amount of AR that all of your characters have, so that the player could play whichever character he wants to go with them into FotM and not just only with basically the main, which has the highest AR from all of your characters beign able to play only with that character in the highest fractal levels, cause of you beign required first to grind your peep off first for more AR to become able with your alts to go into the fractsl for the same higher levels and actually survive there.

But actualyl I rather think ,AR as a siystem together with all this stupid grind behind the AR increasign should get completely removedand revamped into a new and better AR system, that doesn’t require players to grind so much for AR, but instead just to craft higher Resistance Potions as a Job Level 500 Artificer, so that you have to use a Resitance Potion instead to get AR, what would be much better, because this way would get players also somethign god, which could be sold to other players, instead of having to grind tons of gold to get your AR up with super costy refined AR infusions +xx.

If NAet would make such changes, I’m sure also alot of more players would be interested to play at all Fractals, but are currently more scared off from the huge grindfest that is the FotM, just to become able to keep the pace to just be able to play on the higher levels what makes FotM rather a buy to play feature, what is content, which in my opinion shouldn’t exist at all in this kind of way in GW2.
There shouldn’t be locked game content behind a huge wall of money/time grind (in the case you dont have the money) just to become able to play that content together with your friends and guildies, which in most cases could be alot higher progressed in the FotM than you, which is also exactly the reason why GW2 has systems, like Up/Downscaling, so that you would be always able to play together with your friends.

Sadly something liek this is totally missing for FotM, its a game content, that forces the grind upon everybodies throats if you just want to see the higher levels and their rewards ever.

@ Sizer:

Thats why I also say in regard of WvW, to combine BoH together with gold costs and laurels/ectos ect. so that you couldn’t just get it done only with EotM zerg farming
But at least Badges would become a bit more useful.

Gettign 100% ascended from dungeon tokens is also just a matter of how you implement it.
Did I say, that it must be dungeon tokens only? No. Here also ,Anet is free to add more required currencies to be able to get with dungeon tokens also ascended items, like laurels, like ectos ect. or in the case to have somelike like Luck Essences stay valuable also for those which already have maxed it makign Luck Essences (exotic ones) an additional trading currency for ascened items from the dungeon vendors together with their tokens, like a stack of exotic luck essences together with a specific amount of dungeon tokens and x-xx laurels.

There are tons of ways Anet can choose to make gaining something not too easy, while also ensurign, that certain items don’t lose their value for players and thus hittign like 2 birds with 1 stone.

Ascended is meant to be a grind and meant to take time to keep more hardcore players busy. It’s meant to be a reward for putting the hours in to the game to actually get everything you need, be it dragonite, empy, dark matter or laurels from dailies, monthlies and ach chests if you just want to buy trinkets (Like me). Laurels are by far the easiest way to get asc trinkets. All you have to do is play. Ascended is a reliable non-RNG-based high-end reward for actually playing…a reward that cannot be bought or sold for any amount of gold. YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE TIME. As far as I’m concerned a similar system should have been used for legendaries from the get go. Legendary and precursor weapons should not be so heavily reliant on RNG, they should not be tradeable on the TP. Legendary weapons should be based on feats, not luck and how much money you can throw down the mystic toilet.

For me, the stat gain on ascended is simply too small and the skins too ugly to warrant the huge time and money investment so I choose to spend it elseways and use exotics, but I do not feel there is anything wrong with the new system. Top end content HAS to be hard to get in order to keep the hardcore interested, otherwise they’d burn through it in 2 or 3 hours and get bored. For the rest of us, they’re a somewhat unattainable goal. What you need to do is kitten your situation and set more attainable goals, such as achievement chests, and just let the other stuff happen.

How legendary is ascended and legendary gear when every second person has them anyway?

That said, ascended is not alt-friendly, but really, should it be? You still need to put in the time. GW2 is a very casual-friendly game and most or all content can be completed with mediocre gear and good skill. Unless you’re looking for followers, you don’t need to look like Skeltor and run around with a chainsword in order to be effective. A regular Exhalted coat is just as effective as any gem store armor. Volcanus does no more damage than the Pearl Broadsword. Premium gear such as ascended, legendary and ultra-rare skins and minis are more vanity items and in the realm of the hardcore players and if you think they should be easy to get, perhaps you should not be playing an MMO. Again, the stat gain on Ascended/legendary over exotic is so minor that it would have little affect in any real battle.

The problem has never been the ascendant system its the grind to 500, most people out there dont even bother with crafting to begin with. Once you are there, crafting several sets of armor is not that hard or expensive. Getting the bazillion ectos and oris needed to get there on the other hand costs you your first born.

No no no, don’t make ascended more accessible. This will reduce the illusion of progression IE vertical grind, you know.. the stuff that wasn’t supposed to be in grind wars 2.

More grind! More time gates! yeehawwwww

Oh and more crafting, it’s SO fun!!!! woooooewheoehwoehwew

Apolo.5942:

The problem has never been the ascendant system its the grind to 500, most people out there dont even bother with crafting to begin with.

Yes. I actually have most of the materials to make a full set of armor, but just can’t be bothered and don’t want to spend the money to level armor smith to 500. 0-500 in my case. Same goes for weapon smith, which I think I have around 225. I really need to level something to 450 though so I can refine some stuff to make room in my bank.

The only problem with Ascended gear right now are the bottlenecks. These bottlenecks include the time gating to make certain components such as silk weaving thread and the high demand of other components such as silk. Those things can be adjusted such as lowering the time gate from once every 24 hours to once every 12 and by reducing the silk required from 3 scraps per bolt to 2.

I do have 9 level 80’s that I would like to equip in Ascended and do not mind putting in a reasonable amount of time doing so. However considering that crafting Ascended gear makes it account bound on acquire I have to level up each and every craft discipline that currently offers Ascended to 500 which already takes an inordinate amount of time, materials and gold. Either lower the restrictions/difficulty in obtaining some of the items, lower the difficulty/expense in getting to 500 level crafting or as the OP stated add more options.

If I wanted to outfit all 9 of my toons in Ascended given the fact that certain items required are gated to once per day do I really have a chance of reaching that goal? Someone else can do the math for me but I will shortly be 60 and I just do not have the time left!

Apolo.5942:

The problem has never been the ascendant system its the grind to 500, most people out there dont even bother with crafting to begin with. Once you are there, crafting several sets of armor is not that hard or expensive. Getting the bazillion ectos and oris needed to get there on the other hand costs you your first born.

I laughed hard. Getting to 500 costs only a fraction of a single ascended set.
If not you are doing it wrong.

You can also save gold by farming for orichalcum ore and ancient wood logs in the sense you can farm them much quicker than you could to farm the gold to purchase them.

I don’t see a problem with it because you don’t need ascended gear for anything but high level Fractals, and as I understand (never having played it myself) it’s far more likely to drop there than anywhere else.

Ascended gear was always supposed to be hard to get, that’s the point. It’s something for people who want to grind for new gear to work towards, whilst also having a small enough stat increase that no one needs to get it unless they want to.

I’ve got some ascended gear and I’m working on a few more pieces but I’m no where near a full set. But I don’t care because it’s not holding me back, I can still do absolutely everything in the game without it, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes.

To me the solution should be even simpler. Leave the drop rate as it is but the boxes must let you choose which armor piece/weapon and which stats not like it is right now though, because I am kinda sick of getting yet another healing power leg armor you know? So please, considering how rare it is to get an ascended box, make it be something useful, because seriously, I have a longbow+legs armor+another unused weapon chest rotting in my bank, stuff I refuse to use (i opened the longbow box only to unlock the skin -.-)
Edit. And please, don’t answer me trash like “some boxes allow you to choose!” because they give you a restricted amount of stats to choose among, always focused on one main thing (ex. healing power box, allowing you to choose any stat which has healing power in it.)

Silvia.9130:

To me the solution should be even simpler. Leave the drop rate as it is but the boxes must let you choose which armor piece/weapon and which stats not like it is right now though, because I am kinda sick of getting yet another healing power leg armor you know? So please, considering how rare it is to get an ascended box, make it be something useful, because seriously, I have a longbow+legs armor+another unused weapon chest rotting in my bank, stuff I refuse to use (i opened the longbow box only to unlock the skin -.-)
Edit. And please, don’t answer me trash like “some boxes allow you to choose!” because they give you a restricted amount of stats to choose among, always focused on one main thing (ex. healing power box, allowing you to choose any stat which has healing power in it.)

I actually agree with this. It takes some of the RNG out of it.

How to fix ascended system ?
Remove agony.

The credo of Guild Wars 2 was “No vertical progression at level max”.
Result with AR : 14 strata (from 5 to 70) and 5 “hard cap” (10-25-40-55-70)

I don’t have problem with stats incrementation but agony resistance take me away from fractal.

Mecanics in fractal lv30+ seems fun but I don’t have access to them because I don’t reach the AR cap.

Apolo.5942:

The problem has never been the ascendant system its the grind to 500, most people out there dont even bother with crafting to begin with. Once you are there, crafting several sets of armor is not that hard or expensive.

Levelling tailor to 500 is way cheaper than crafting a set of ascended light armor. You may be thinking of weapons – and you’d be partially right here. While their price is quite high, compared to armor it may seem like a small change.
Of course, seeing as the ascended armor crafting, with its ridiculous costs, got introduced after CDI on rewards where it was clearly pointed out that the community generally expect ascended gear to be more easily available, i wouldn’t expect any changes here. Devs many times agreed, that the cost of the ascended is too high. The end result however has always been increasing the cost of the next batch.

purecontact.1680:

How to fix ascended system ?
Remove agony.

The credo of Guild Wars 2 was “No vertical progression at level max”.
Result with AR : 14 strata (from 5 to 70) and 5 “hard cap” (10-25-40-55-70)

I don’t have problem with stats incrementation but agony resistance take me away from fractal.

Mecanics in fractal lv30+ seems fun but I don’t have access to them because I don’t reach the AR cap.

They only said there would be no gear treadmill. One new tier doesn’t equal a treadmill.

They put in Ascended armor because they grossly underestimated how quickly players would be fully geared in exotic gear. They wanted something for hardcore players to work toward that wasn’t as time and money consuming as the legendary.

So they gave it a slight stat boost and put in a mechanism (agony resistance) that would only be useful in one part of the game (fractals, of which there are non agony levels).

The only place it may have a part in is WvW. But WvW was also not designed to be balanced and player skill also comes into play. A horrible player in great gear could still end up being beat by a great player in horrible gear.

Seera.5916:

They put in Ascended armor because they grossly underestimated how quickly players would be fully geared in exotic gear.

Which, according to the pre-launch statement was meant to be as soon as they hit 80.
Yeah, they totally didn’t expect people to gear up as fast as orginally envisioned.[/sarcasm]

Seera.5916:

They only said there would be no gear treadmill. One new tier doesn’t equal a treadmill.

Here is my point, it’s not “one new tier”, it’s -at least- 5 new tiers.
In other MMO, tiers define access to new raids : T0 unlocks Raid1, T1 unlocks Raid2, […]
In guild wars 2, AR10 cap unlocks FotM10, AR25 cap unlocks FotM 20, […]

I don’t define a tier to its color or its name but to its function.

@OP

But what do you need Ascended armor for that you feel it needs to be so widely accessible (even though a lot of people have it and have gotten it without issue)?

WvW? Nope.
PvP? Nope.
Dungeons? Nope.
FoTM? 1-30 Nope. (can put 5 AR on each trinket), and even then if you are running FoTM 20-29, you have a chance to get infused rings, which you can put +10-15 AR on each, meaning you don’t even really need Ascended armor until FoTM40.

So FoTM40+. That’s the only place you need Ascended armor.

The % of players that run FoTM40+ is pretty small compared to the normal population.

I just don’t see the need for it. If you simply want to have the best gear available, then you will have to put forth the effort that thousands of others have.

Draknar.5748:

I just don’t see the need for it. If you simply want to have the best gear available, then you will have to put forth the effort that thousands of others have.

OP was pretty clear on that. Its not about the amount of effort neeeded to get the gear. Its about the restricted way to get it. Let take some exemple.

- For me it super easy to craft an ascended armor. I got 2 heavy and 1 medium. With a light armor on the way. But I enjoy most of the stuff that I need to do to get the material for the armor.

- Some of my friend play twice as much as me but don’t have any armor. They play WvW mostly with only some PvE dungeon run like 1-2 per week. They need to play the PvE they dislike to get the armor they want to play in WvW. See the problem?

- Same with someone who play only sPvP. They won’t have much silk or linen, etc.

- Same with a guy that don’t like dungeon.

- What about ppl that have only a small guild? Their accessory will cost them so much more.

- For someone playing fractal, rings are super easy to get. For someone who don’t, it will cost more.

Different path to get ascended should be available and should be equal in term of effort. If I needed to get most of the stuff I need to craft an ascended armor from sPvP, i would not have a complete armor yet because I only play from time to time. I would hate that, and I can understand why other ppl hate how the system work right now.

For the RNG. They should have 1 type of ascended armor chest and 1 type of ascended weapon chest. And you should be able to choose both what specific armor pieces/weapons AND what stats you want. Don’t change the number of drop, they should be rare. But that way, everytime you get a chest you can use it. In my guild we dropped about 20 ascended chest. Only 2 of those were used, the rest was kittenty stats.

Play more than half an hour a day and eventually you will get your stuff. Or pull out the magically infused credit card for the instant win. Or just be patient.
Though i’m still bothered by the fact that earrings costs 40 laurels per piece …

The main problem with the existing system is the high requirement of both dragonite and empyreal. Almost everyone gets more of one than the other and it’s annoying to have to grind through dungeons/events to get the other if it’s not your favorite thing. If even a 5 to 1 conversion between empyreal and dragonite was added to the game it would improve the quality of life of many players.

I also suspect many players would like to spend less real time in the assembling of the items once you have enough cash/empyreal/dragonite available. The trading post limit of 250 items per order isn’t fit for the massive requirements of ascended crafting. The bloated crafting system is unwieldy and tedious. The time gating on the crafting is just annoying.

Other than that, I don’t see where the OP is coming from. Ascended items are not meant to be inclusive. It is top tier armor for players who do high tier content. People who do not do high tier content don’t need ascended so it doesn’t matter if they cannot make it. There already is an upgrade process for armor and that is called a transmutation charge.