Guild Wars 2

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

Am I the only one who doesnt mind vertical progression aka treadmills?

I love doing pve its what I like. A big part of that for me was beating or trying to beat the boss encounters or dungeons in general. And I was ok with I have to do these 5 dungeons to become stronger then next five after I geared from the first. It always gave me a direction in pve, what I had to do to make my hero stronger to move to the next part of the MMO story( fighting the progressively stronger bad guys, until I killed the boss man himself).

I miss a soild progression of dungeons, at 80 I feel like I have no reason to do a dungeon if I dont find the armor pieces more visually attractive. Hell I love how my guy looks and so what now I’m done with PVE until next expansion? I’d much rather have a tread mill than what we have now.

It worked for GW1 for 7 years and it will work for this game. If this happens to actually be the beginning of a treadmill i will be disappointed but i waited for this game for way to long and really enjoy it.

Wow, never read so many Drama Queens. Seriously, all this just because you have to have the best stats even though the not having them doesn’t limit the you in the game in anyway.

My favorite complaints so far “Anet broke their promise to me” and the “I’m going to suck in WvW now”.

I’m all for something new and optional to do. Plus finally get a back slot too.

Also, can someone point out to me where in the Manifesto they say that they will never have vertical item progression? I think the part that most people focus on is where Collin talks about grind, and in that he’s talking about combat mechanics, not items. Also I need to reread the golden rule post but off the top of my head they don’t talk about never having vertical item progression. Could be wrong, I’m rereading it now.

edit: Ok I just read the golden rule post again and I found nothing that jumped out to me that was anti vertical progression. Maybe the respect the player bit, but I feel like that’s a bit of a stretch.

Well I obviously didn’t read all 43 pages, so not sure if the general feeling is one of joy or despair, but as for myself, well, based on the Manifesto (and also on GW1) this really isn’t turning out to be the game I was expecting (or in part, promised).

I don’t know if this gear will be a massive grind or not – but this game is one of the grindiest MMOs I’ve played (which to be fair does NOT include any Korean grindfests), though largely those grinds have been unnecessary (to this point, and thankfully). But this sounds like something that, if the reports are correct, are pretty major stat increases, so not really pieces that you get because you want to, but because you have to.

That sounds like a grindy type of thing, and a requirement of sorts.

Not really something I’m interested in.

Tyr.1965:

They wont have a response other than pushing this content live and silently telling us to deal with it. Too bad for them that the way I deal with it is with my wallet.

Forget the wallet. I deal with it by spending time else where. Currently checking the forums for updates in between Mech Drops.

…Lol…ArenaNet mod deleted my post saying…

RIP Manifesto. Goodbye GW2 when the next big release comes around, because you completely eliminated a huge part of what made your game stand out.

They’re really trying to censor out the truth because they can’t keep a promise? It’s the truth, and they won’t even admit to it. That blog post was nothing but a commercial trying to hype us up for something we don’t WANT. ArenaNet PROMISED this would not happen with GW2 MANY times, you can find it in many pre-launch interviews, even post launch interviews. You can find it on the website in the videos section with the Manifesto videos. (Until they delete those, too ?) In Lions Arch, my guild of 480 people, EVERYONE is angry about this that I have seen.

ekimsfree.9406:

Wow, never read so many Drama Queens. Seriously, all this just because you have to have the best stats even though the not having them doesn’t limit the you in the game in anyway.

My favorite complaints so far “Anet broke their promise to me” and the “I’m going to suck in WvW now”.

I’m all for something new and optional to do. Plus finally get a back slot too.

People will use it as an excuse to why they lost in World vs World, but it won’t be why they lost.

Catrenna.4298:

I find it funny how some people say the whiners are mistaken as the majority, but you believe your opinion against ascended gear is somehow a majority.

I’m personally happy with the change.

Somes people like you like gear grinding, its another way to play… I dont understand where the fun in doing 5343504time the same thing for just a poor item but why not after all, its your problem.

But, GW1 was one of the last barrier against all thoses none sense brainless grindfest game to really focus the gameplay on the SKILL ( and skill i mean the various possible build, various way to play your class, and smartness to play it ) not just "yeah i have a +50weapons and armor, you only have a +5, i beat you easy.

There is enough mmo like that everywhere, no one here wanted that for GW2.

wow did everyone suddenly turn into elites overnight? i don’t see what the problem is if there is slightly more powerful gear, hell for me it means more adventuring and stuff to pursue. since i’m a crafter i look forward to this, ’specially the weapons, my pearl blade aint exactly pretty ya know?

Jamais vu.5284:

MMOWarrior.9312:

Ask Turbine how this same sort of system worked for LotRO… dungeon gating.. locking off content/items except for a select group and type of player (raiders)… it turned LotRO into a ghost town… if fact it did so much damage to the community that they eventually pulled the system out of the game..

This is actually a valid concern, however we know nothing of the frequency of Agony mobs, particularly those that will be added after Lost Shores. Maybe they’ll be concentrated on a select few elite monsters in a dungeon or two. It’d be unfortunate if some close minded PUGs would lock you out on those particular ones, but I doubt the rest (i.e. most) future endgame content will need it. ANet isn’t dumb. They realize the casual, particularly new, players won’t attain Ascended gear any time soon, and will design future content around it.

This change indicates otherwise. Especially that phenomenally contradictory news post where they said that adding a gear grind is not a gear grind, and that starting the endless upgrade treadmill is not a treadmill.

“We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

These claims are absurd in their contradiction.

My thoughts on this.

Earlier I did the maths to show that ascended gear is, roughly, 26% more powerful than exotic gear. That is huge. Now, the problem is not that they are introducing a new tier of gear; as others have pointed out we already have blue, green, yellow, orange tiers.

So, what’s the problem with a new tier? Here’s the problems:

1) First and foremost, it’s only available through this new dungeon system. Before, you could get the highest tier of gear, exotic, through whatever means you found more appealing: dynamic events karma farming, dungeons, WvWvW, auction house, crafting, etc. Whatever way you enjoyed playing the game was a valid way to do so: Arenanet stayed true to their “manifesto”. Now, whatever you ultimately want to do in the game, if you want to be the most effective at it (barring sPvP of course), you have to do this dungeon.

2) It’s a gating mechanic. Others have stated why this is bad, I won’t beat on a dead horse.

3) It’s all of these things being introduced 2 months after release; not, say, two years.

Siphaed.9235:

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

They have indicated that full sets of this gear including armour and weapons will be released in coming patches.

Radiance all but killed LotRO at the time… I watched people leave in droves… before radiance pretty much anyone could enjoy the end game dungeon… after radiance only a selected few ever got to see the end game content… this sounds very similar to me… ANet…. look to what has happened to other MMOs and learn…

oh… after Radiance decimated the LotRO community it was pulled from the game…

Webba.3071:

bcbully.7289:

Webba.3071:

This has the ring of truth to it. While it is disappointing that it seems the only way to make a financially successful mmo is gear treadmilling it isn’t entirely unexpected. Guess WOW will remain king for a while yet.

edit – Thanks Leiloni!

The crazy thing is if GW2 had a sub, they probably wouldn’t have to make this change of direction.

Report indicates that GW2 has established itself as one of the main earners of the company. Guess the pressure to maintain that position without box sales going forward is pretty heavy. I suppose this may be a result of the gem store not being as profitable as they hoped. Wonder if there were more attractive buys on there, coupled with better results stamping out 3rd party gold selling/botting this would not have happened?

Take away the RNG BLC BS and add tons and tons of fixed price skins to the store and they will hit a gold mine…

What the bloody hell?? The main reason i got this game was because of the horizontal progression that was lauded by the devs. I’m sick to death of the gear grinds. If i wanted that, I would’ve continued with WoW or whatever million and 1 MMOs out there with the SAME thing.

the game is out 3 months, and already exotic gear is obsolete?!? so what happens to one of the defining features of this game? WvWvW? they’re sol? what if i want to get into dungeons after ascended is released then? it’ll be MUST HAVE FULL ASCENDED spam for lfg chat. talk about a massive backwards step, thought GW2 was supposed to be evolutionary.

what next, the trinity re-introduced because that is what WoW players want? so GW2 will ‘evolve’ to be a WoW clone?

what a waste of a buy. how about a kitten road map on what the hell you guys are heading with your game so you don’t waste my bloody time?

What happened to making all grind just cosmetic? You lied about there being no required grind, yet ascended armor and improved legendaries are just that. Maybe you should reread your own manifesto because this goes against everything you promised and a lot of players feel rightfully cheated.

And having to grind up for agony resistance just to do the new dungeon, how is that not exactly like WoW raiding?

Most games that avoid the gear treadmill becoming an issue do so by offering more options for things to do at the level cap (or ‘endgame’).

The real issue here is that the only way to progress you character right now is through equipment, and as a result players have maxed out their gear and hit a brick wall as the progress you can make here is finite. ANet REALLY needs to start implementing other systems to allow players to progress in other (ideally open-ended) ways:

*Give us player housing
*Give us an AA system (this doesn’t even have to give combat related stat upgrades)
*Give us ways of unlocking new skills
*Give players ways to create content themselves

Any game I’ve played that has had things like housing or player-created content has seen a massive shift in the end-game focus for a lot of players. In EQ2 a very large number of players played solely to obtain rare items to display in their house. Suddenly rather than just one 6-piece equipment set these players had a reason to collect 100s of pieces, even some they couldn’t use. And this was entirely a goal these players set for themselves.

There is very little room in GW2 for players to set their own goals. Quite literally everyone is just aiming for a legendary (in PvE). Once they’ve done that they’ve pretty much done everything there is. That fact alone is what ANet needs to address.

Legendaries shouldn’t be the only long-term PvE goal at 80 and getting one shouldn’t be the end of PvE content for a given character. We need other open-ended progression systems.

Havana.8625:

One thing that would have greatly extended content would have been making all zones decent at level 80 in terms of rewards, or at least upping the amount of awards in lower level zones. They built a huge and beautiful world and people spend all their time gathering Ori and repeating Plinx and a few dungeons. The content was there, it just didn’t make any sense to do it. Instead they added this.

This is another really good point. Theoretically, the game’s downscaling could have and should have resulted in the difficulty and rewards being approximately equal in every zone that you are an appropriate level for, making good on the idea that “the whole game is endgame”.

Instead, there are basically two or three zones that feel ‘right’ on a level 80 character, and the rest are all a joke, difficulty-wise. Those zones also give far and away better drops, experience, Karma, etc than every other overworld zone in the game. As a result, the entire max-level player base is funneled into about 10% of the playable space, instead of being dispersed relatively uniformly throughout the game.

Why are the Orr zones the only ones in the game where you spend most of your time taking part in a Dynamic Event? Everywhere else in the game seems to have three parts Renown Hearts to every time you do an event – and some of the events are at least as interesting and well-designed as the ones in Orr.

Why is Orr the only place in the game where you have Dynamic Events that don’t just chain into other Dynamic Events, but actually affect completely different groups of players than the ones taking part in a particular event? The god temples have really cool effects on the area leading up to Arah. What’s to stop there from being events in, say, Harathi Hinterlands that have an effect on events taking place all the way down in Sparkfly Fen?

You wouldn’t even strictly need more content to satisfy level 80 players – doing a good job of spreading those players out around the parts of the existing world and the existing content would probably at least double the amount of things that players actually feel like they have to do. It’s incredible how inefficiently used the content in this game is, and there are some prime opportunities to fix those issues and show off just how large of a game Guild Wars 2 really is, even this close to launch. That there seems to be no effort to actually do that is simply stunning.

Raigou.7329:

wow did everyone suddenly turn into elites overnight? i don’t see what the problem is if there is slightly more powerful gear, hell for me it means more adventuring and stuff to pursue. since i’m a crafter i look forward to this, ’specially the weapons, my pearl blade aint exactly pretty ya know?

Its +5 today, then in 3months +10, then +15… it will never end, to end up with a MMO who only offer a gear grind as only occupation.

If you like that, i guess you have enough similar mmo, and korean f2p for that.

Its not the initial GW2 philosophy. THAT’s the problem.

I think resist gateing is better than straight stats but I was kind of hoping we were done with locking content behind gates. I mean changing out resist for each place you go, grinding resist just doesn’t sound fun. Just seems to go against everything they claimed. Let’s all go here, oh wait you don’t have inferno resist. Well let’s go here, oh wait I don’t have chaos resist. Well let’s not go anywhere and grind resist FUN!!! I just can’t believe they are caveing so fast. Best mmo to come out in awhile and their ready to throw out all originality for the vocal minority you can’t plz, that destroy every game.

Let me ask you guys this..

How you going to to slot Superior Runes and Superior Sigils on these weapon and armor when they’re released.

Cause you can’t with the current ascended gear gear.

This Ascended gear is a slippy slope. After 3 months, now, you have new gear that is more powerful, thus becoming the “must get” items. People will just rush to the new dungeon to get these gear, making the current dungeons useless.

For now rings and backpack is not so bad right, but this is the start. When ascended weapons and gear come out, as Anet says it will, then all their current content will be invalid at once.

Unless you are one of those rare players that will grind for 2nd best gear, when you could be grinding for the best.

Also Infusions act as a gate, forcing people to progress linearly from dungeon to dungeon. For hard core players it is ok, but GW2 is supposed to be for casual players. It has a large base of such players. After awhile they will not be able to compete with all those grind to pass the gate.

Thus many will stop playing. I stopped playing WoW because at top level, I found that I cannot do more then 1/4 of the end game content because I do not have the “special” gear.

Now GW2 is going that way. It is sad. Also it is a turn about on their policy of no gear progression at end game.

maybe if you people complaining would have bought some gems, this wouldn’t have happened.

Bregah.7365:

I don’t know if this gear will be a massive grind or not – but this game is one of the grindiest MMOs I’ve played (which to be fair does NOT include any Korean grindfests), though largely those grinds have been unnecessary (to this point, and thankfully). But this sounds like something that, if the reports are correct, are pretty major stat increases, so not really pieces that you get because you want to, but because you have to.

That sounds like a grindy type of thing, and a requirement of sorts.

Not really something I’m interested in.

To be fair this game is not very grindy at all compared to most games. Here you play the type of content you enjoy and are rewarded for it with cool stuff, but that cool stuff can be gotten elsewhere much easier so in the end, you just end up playing what you enjoy which is not the definition of grind at all. Do what you find fun and get rewarded. I have played Korean games and other games and definitely seen grind, this is nowhere close. Still hate the new Ascended gear thing, but so far I have not seen a grind in GW2 comparable to those that other games have.

Siphaed.9235:

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

It’s 8 (EIGHT) %. So you’re utterly wrong. Did you finish school at all?

Xsorus.2507:

Let me ask you guys this..

How you going to to slot Superior Runes and Superior Sigils on these weapon and armor when they’re released.

Cause you can’t with the current ascended gear gear.

The blog post says

“There are multiple types of Infusions and Infusion slots. In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity from new Mystic Forge recipes. Infusion upgrade types must be paired with their like slot, with the exception of the rare and versatile Omni Infusions which can be slotted into any type of Infusion slot.”

Xsorus.2507:

Let me ask you guys this..

How you going to to slot Superior Runes and Superior Sigils on these weapon and armor when they’re released.

Cause you can’t with the current ascended gear gear.

“Introducing Legendary Armor where you can slot both Infusion and a Rune/Sigil!”

Not every slots for Runes though, many slot for pure stats.

Jamais vu.5284:

MMOWarrior.9312:

Ask Turbine how this same sort of system worked for LotRO… dungeon gating.. locking off content/items except for a select group and type of player (raiders)… it turned LotRO into a ghost town… if fact it did so much damage to the community that they eventually pulled the system out of the game..

This is actually a valid concern, however we know nothing of the frequency of Agony mobs, particularly those that will be added after Lost Shores. Maybe they’ll be concentrated on a select few elite monsters in a dungeon or two. It’d be unfortunate if some close minded PUGs would lock you out on those particular ones, but I doubt the rest (i.e. most) future endgame content will need it. ANet isn’t dumb. They realize the casual, particularly new, players won’t attain Ascended gear any time soon, and will design future content around it.

Read into LOTRO’s Radiance system. Agony is almost a direct copy. After a certain point, you can no longer progress because your life will be too low to fight anything due to “Agony” debuff.

Linsey Murdock

Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must.

It’s a gating system. Eventually you will not be able to participate in content due to lack of specific gear.

Puggers will most definitely be requiring you to have specific gear for invites depending on what part of the dungeon they’re doing.

…sad really…

This is the worst idea ever. You wont get people to buy more gems this way. The best way is to come up with skins every few weeks that our characters can use while in combat. People would buy tons for them.

I love this game so far. You get to obtain the best gear pretty easily, then you have fun, and not worry about getting geared up anymore.

Getting geared up is not end game. What you come up with Anet, for us to do, after getting the gear is End game. For example, making WvWvW more fun/balanced. More modes for Spvp instead of conquest. More actual content for us to enjoy like some aspects of the Halloween events.

Now it has become like other games. Why do some players think end games is grinding for more gear? People grind for best gear so they can end up enjoying them at max level. You spend a lot of time getting them in other games, then after an update the gear becomes useless. then you grind for the next set. Then after a while you grind for the next set, then you grind for the next set, then you grind for the next set, the next, the next then the next. This is not fun. You should be able to stop grinding for sets at one point, then HAVE SOMETHING ACTUALLY FUN to do.

We alreayd have thing fun to do in this game and I love it. Anet only have to find other funs things for us to play and find ways for players to play together. This is not it. This is why most of us have left other games in the first place. If bottom line/making money is the incentive, this will not make you more money Anet.

Please no gear progression !

This is my first Arena Net game. I did not play Guild Wars 1 but always heard good stuff about it from the mmorpg community and how if was focused on skill rather than grind the best gear to win. So I was on Youtube searching for upcoming mmorpgs and I came across The Guild Wars 2 Manifesto. I trusted what they said in manifesto as it was not a random advertisement, but it was people who are involved in the development of the game talking about their vision. Plus the company had a good track record in Guild Wars 1. After seeing the manifesto I decided to trust Arena Net and pre-purchase Guild Wars 2.

I think Guild Wars 2 is a decent mmorpg. It is not as ground breaking as they claimed it to be, but still a decent mmorpg. The hype they themselves created about it revolutionizing mmorpg scene may have resulted in high game sales, but it has led to some customers who felt a bit misled. But I will again say Guild Wars 2 is still a decent mmorpg which has potential to be a good game if they fix some of serious game breaking issues.

And now Ascended gear comes. If it is obtainable only from dungeons or my spending 100+ Gold then I won’t have it. I absolutely hate farming/grinding and the reason I payed for Guild Wars 2 is because the manifesto said grinding is not required to be on equal footing with other players. Now fanboys will ask “OmG u so mad, u feel so entitled, why u wanna have best gear?”. My answer is that the reason I payed for Guild Wars 2 is because it was promised to not to be another “grind to win mmorpg”. Now you will ask how it is win to have better gear in GW2? I will tell you that unless you do WvWvW by running with a 80 man zerg spamming your auto attack button, gear DOES matter. There are many scenarios like 1v1, 1vs2, 1vs3, you on 5k HP and 2 feet away from your keep portal with your immune to damage skill on cooldown, defending your yak which is almost at the supply drop point from 1-5 enemies, enemy killing Keep Lords and Camp Supervisors faster and capturing the area while your group gets there 2 seconds later. In PvE a group of 6 players with Ascended weapons and you hit a mob at the same time, while they get the loot you fail to get enough damage to register your kill etc etc etc etc. I can give you more examples of WvWvW and non WvWvW scenarios as well but those who are willing to understand have understood by now.

Arena Net, I am just patiently waiting to see what changes have been made if you provide the patch notes. My appeal to you is please stay true to your promises made in Guild Wars 2 manifesto. I am hoping you will make sincere efforts to keep the trust players who payed for GW2 after seeing manifesto have in you.The world does not needs another grind/pay to win mmorpg.

Well it’s still not entirely clear how hard it will be to get these two ascended items. We can assume it won’t be super easy, as it is there to provide a sense of progression. It sounds like there are actually four different types of ascended gear: no-infusion slot, defensive infusion slot, offensive infusion slot, and omni-infusion slot. So it could actually be that the lesser difficulties of the new dungeon drop the no-infusion slot (or the stuff to make it) and then as you progress you get the next infusion slot up.

We also aren’t sure what will go in the infusion slot exactly. What is the difference between a defensive and offensive infusion? Infusion is described as dealing with agony— does agony lower your damage output and make you take damage? Do you have to decide between taking less damage and doing more damage? How will we obtain infusions? It sounds like their will be different qualities of infusions also: in this update they are capped at “fine.”

Count me in as another voice that’s very, very disappointed in this. I’ve sunk about $40 into the cash shop since release, and I doubt I’ll be spending any more after this.

I don’t care that the stat differences between ascended and exotics are small – those differences shouldn’t be there at all, and if Anet had stuck to the manifesto they’d been touting for years, they wouldn’t be. It’s a troubling development on its own, and even moreso because it’s the kind of thing Anet said they wouldn’t do.

The implementation for infusion is also making me uneasy. It was a perfectly fine mechanic in GW1 – but in GW1, you did a mission or found an out of the way NPC, and bam, all the armor you were currently wearing was infused. That was it. There was no fussing around with crafting materials, new pieces of armor, or new upgrade slots, and infusion didn’t improve armor stats (all it did was afford you protection against one particular monster skill from one particular monster). Furthermore, after Prophecies, lack of infusion didn’t keep you out of the endgame (War in Krytra excluded). There was a whole lot of content – difficult content – that you could complete without touching infusion. Here… well, I’d like to say I expect the mystic forge recipes to not require grinding for components, the new armor pieces to not require fine transmutation stones, and infusion to not gate off substantial amounts of endgame content from here on out, but I don’t have faith that none of those things will happen. Maybe if Anet had stuck to their word, I’d have more trust in them.

Galandil.9641:

Siphaed.9235:

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

It’s 8 (EIGHT) %. So you’re utterly wrong. Did you finish school at all?

in a few months it will be 16

I never expected to hear the term “Best in slot” in a guild wars game. Especially not after the manifesto.

If this goes through, I’m asking for a refund, I think.

What worries me even more is how they plan to add full sets of this in. Just smacks of what ruined pve for other games, not to mention breaking of the manifesto by adding a gear treadmill. I honestly dont think I will keep playing if this goes live. To many games have been ruined by needless reistance gating and the whole blowing of their own manifesto bit.

LithePanther.5027:

This community has some of the most pathetic people in it I have ever seen.

That is all.

At the rate we’re going, there’s not going to be a community left.

Grats for caving in to WoW players leaving for MoP for an endgame :P

The big kitten reaming WvW players will take will feel awesome as well

Siphaed.9235:

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

Go read the blog post again, ring and back slot for now, they plan to eventually add in armors and weapons of this tier as well

Lurinna.4306:

I never expected to hear the term “Best in slot” in a guild wars game. Especially not after the manifesto.

If this goes through, I’m asking for a refund, I think.

Exotic is Best in Slot..

…..

Its like they took a page right out of the “Turbine: How to Ruin Your Game” playbook.

I don’t get it… Don’t these guys pay attention to history?

You may proceed to lock this thread now as it concerns Radiance…I mean…Ascended gear.

bcbully.7289:

maybe if you people complaining would have bought some gems, this wouldn’t have happened.

People have obviously been buying gems and a lot of them if you read the financial reports that they gave for NCSoft investors.

No, this isn’t because of the core audience not paying up. This is because P.O.S no-lifers spent 1000 hours in the game since launch and are now complaining because they’ve done everything in the game faster than any development team can hope to keep up with. Now those whiny MMO addicts have twisted the one game that didn’t pander to them.

Xsorus.2507:

Lurinna.4306:

I never expected to hear the term “Best in slot” in a guild wars game. Especially not after the manifesto.

If this goes through, I’m asking for a refund, I think.

Exotic is Best in Slot..

…..

There’s a difference between have a “the best in slot” and a “new best in slot”. One is more worrying than the other in a game trying to get away from grinding.

Not only that, there’s two tiers of Ascended gear.
“rarer versions of the items also come with additional Agony Resistance built into them.”

Hope you can grind enough to get all the built in agony gear!

Wasselin.1235:

Well it’s still not entirely clear how hard it will be to get these two ascended items. We can assume it won’t be super easy, as it is there to provide a sense of progression. It sounds like there are actually four different types of ascended gear: no-infusion slot, defensive infusion slot, offensive infusion slot, and omni-infusion slot. So it could actually be that the lesser difficulties of the new dungeon drop the no-infusion slot (or the stuff to make it) and then as you progress you get the next infusion slot up.

We also aren’t sure what will go in the infusion slot exactly. What is the difference between a defensive and offensive infusion? Infusion is described as dealing with agony— does agony lower your damage output and make you take damage? Do you have to decide between taking less damage and doing more damage? How will we obtain infusions? It sounds like their will be different qualities of infusions also: in this update they are capped at “fine.”

Agony is a DoT that cannot be cleansed. As you’re progressing through the new dungeon, you will get to a point where you will need to have an agony defense infusion because the DoT will be too powerful.

Well, I wish I hadn’t just dropped 10 bucks on gems the other day. I didn’t buy this game just to have Anet decide to cater to a crowd they never marketed to in the first place.

Wasselin.1235:

Well it’s still not entirely clear how hard it will be to get these two ascended items. We can assume it won’t be super easy, as it is there to provide a sense of progression. It sounds like there are actually four different types of ascended gear: no-infusion slot, defensive infusion slot, offensive infusion slot, and omni-infusion slot. So it could actually be that the lesser difficulties of the new dungeon drop the no-infusion slot (or the stuff to make it) and then as you progress you get the next infusion slot up.

We also aren’t sure what will go in the infusion slot exactly. What is the difference between a defensive and offensive infusion? Infusion is described as dealing with agony— does agony lower your damage output and make you take damage? Do you have to decide between taking less damage and doing more damage? How will we obtain infusions? It sounds like their will be different qualities of infusions also: in this update they are capped at “fine.”

If we infer its easy by seeing how easy it was to get exotic’d out. I’d say every level 80 will be getting the items fairly easy if they want them

Compared to its Exotic counterpart, new Ascended-rarity “Explorer” ring has:
+5 Power
+5 Precision
+3% Magic Find

+???? (Unused Defensive Infusion Slot)

Magic Find is valuable. Some gear slots are more efficient for MF than others, but on an exotic ring 3% MF is worth ***67*** of another stat. (Compare: Opal Orichalcum Ring vs. Emerald Orichalcum Ring.)

Then there’s the Defensive Infusion Slot. It’s possible that this slot will strictly be for PVE attunement mechanics like Agony Resistance. But I don’t think so, because the blog post says: “In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity…” So they’ll have different itemizations, and probably different tiers of their own, which seems to suggest more stat boosts.

I’m not that interested in debating how many stat points is too many. (The real problem is that in the designer’s own words, “This is just the beginning.”) But for those who are, the currently proposed number isn’t 2 or 3 or 5 stat points per item, it’s closer to 100.

Wait, will the infusion slots have actual stats? That would be insane.

krookie.6378:

Wasselin.1235:

Well it’s still not entirely clear how hard it will be to get these two ascended items. We can assume it won’t be super easy, as it is there to provide a sense of progression. It sounds like there are actually four different types of ascended gear: no-infusion slot, defensive infusion slot, offensive infusion slot, and omni-infusion slot. So it could actually be that the lesser difficulties of the new dungeon drop the no-infusion slot (or the stuff to make it) and then as you progress you get the next infusion slot up.

We also aren’t sure what will go in the infusion slot exactly. What is the difference between a defensive and offensive infusion? Infusion is described as dealing with agony— does agony lower your damage output and make you take damage? Do you have to decide between taking less damage and doing more damage? How will we obtain infusions? It sounds like their will be different qualities of infusions also: in this update they are capped at “fine.”

Agony is a DoT that cannot be cleansed. As you’re progressing through the new dungeon, you will get to a point where you will need to have an agony defense infusion because the DoT will be too powerful.

What’s the agony offensive-infusion slot then? Why would a omni-infusion slot be desirable?