Guild Wars 2

Crater.1625:

Adding more powerful equipment doesn’t add depth; it removes depth.

Don’t think so. Going back to stand in LA afk in full exotics until WvW reset.

I agree that games need meaningful progression and new content to avoid stagnation.

However, new gear with higher numbers is neither. It’s an arbitrary gating system to extend the life of the actual new content.

Haette.2701:

Creslin.1758:

Yeah! I can’t believe that they added vertical progression to this game!

Now let me get back to leveling my character in a sequential fashion from levels 1 to 80, unlocking new content as I get higher level.

Am I the only one that thinks leveling is already PLENTY of vertical? As in, we don’t need any more?

Judging from the 9500+ post QQ thread about Ascended gear…clearly, you are not.

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I would prefer not to have to replace my gear over and over and over (except in the case of aesthetics)

Since it looks like that’s an inevitability my sincere hope at this point, then, is that there are provided multiple avenues to access that gear: dungeons + pvp + crafting.

Greyfeld.7104:

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

We know you will see requests for infusion levels with the Fractals dungeon, because they explicitly said that’s basically how it works.

But for everything else…I really doubt it. How many times have you seen “LFM full exotics only!” requests? I’m guessing never, so why would you expect them to start with Ascended gear?

Greyfeld.7104:

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I have issues believing this will happen en masse. Considering how the only dungeons I see spammed in chat is usually the path of least resistance (AC explorables, CoF path 1 & 2, etc.) and the harder Dungeons / Paths (Arah expl, Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 post buff, etc) are all but ignored. I really have a tough time believing pugs are going to be lining up by the boat load to do content that is supposedly even more difficult than the hard stuff they don’t bother to run already.

Crater.1625:

Haette.2701:

Am I the only one that thinks leveling is already PLENTY of vertical? As in, we don’t need any more?

Hell, the best changes they could make to the game’s vertical progression would be to either let you just create a character at 80 and bypass most/all of that stuff, or to implement upscaling in all zones instead of just WvW and special events.

I think that’s a bit far, but capping everything at level 40-50 or so and bringing everything above that level down sounds good to me.

Is it possible, maybe, that the insane difficulty of getting this stuff is meant to actually deter most players from even trying to do so?

In other words, is ArenaNet saying: “Hey, those few of you who like to/can grind for 10 hours a day, here’s this one thing for you. There will be 20 of you per server and you can all form a guild and run Fractals all day or whatever, whilst everyone else (95+% of players) continues to play the game based on our original design philosophy”?

The slippery slope argument is really tempting to accept but it often is a bad argument. ArenaNet might just do this and then go back to designing the game the way they’ve been advertising it, to throw a bone to grinding masochists and show off some gear that, even though almost no one will realistically have it, will be there to assure anyone who cares that there is (theoretically) a traditional MMO endgame of sorts in GW2, if they want it, which they probably won’t when they see what it really is.

I don’t think that’s it. You could make that argument for Legendary weapons, but Ascended equipment seems to fall within the range of “You can definitely do this, but it’s going to take you hundreds of hours of grinding to get the whole set”. Since it’s done one (useful) piece at a time (as opposed to Legendaries, which are a collection of useless junk right up until you put the final recipe into the MF), it’s more ‘palatable’ for its target audience – people who want to grind, but don’t want to have such a long, uninterrupted grind that they have to start pondering the existential questions about why they’re grinding.

Not to mention that it is required to have Ascended equipment to tackle the toughest areas of the new dungeons, and that Agony is specifically designed to have no counter other than to grind out the better equipment.

The grind begins folks. Hope you’re ready for it heh

But guys… I was told that dye was “vertical progression”…. wasn’t that the reason dyes were made character bound instead of account?

Crater.1625:

I don’t think that’s it. You could make that argument for Legendary weapons, but Ascended equipment seems to fall within the range of “You can definitely do this, but it’s going to take you hundreds of hours of grinding to get the whole set”. Since it’s done one (useful) piece at a time (as opposed to Legendaries, which are a collection of useless junk right up until you put the final recipe into the MF), it’s more ‘palatable’ for its target audience – people who want to grind, but don’t want to have such a long, uninterrupted grind that they have to start pondering the existential questions about why they’re grinding.

Not to mention that it is required to have Ascended equipment to tackle the toughest areas of the new dungeons, and that Agony is specifically designed to have no counter other than to grind out the better equipment.

1) You can definitely get Legendaries, but it’s going to take you hundreds of hours of grinding.
2) What part of a billion T6 mats and skill points is “useful pieces?”
3) In the end, it’s all for people who are too impatient to get a legendary weapon, except now it affects everyone else too through stats.
4) It’s grind for the sake of grind.

I’m seriously starting to suspect the only competent department here is the art department.

You can technically definitely get a Legendary, yeah, but I meant more psychologically. Many people look at the requirement for getting a Legendary, and just go “Nope”.

And while that’s a personal quality that varies from person to person, I think the number of people who look at the hundreds and hundreds of hours it takes to make a Legendary and just go “I’m not bothering with this” is smaller than the number of people who look at the (anywhere from 25-90?) hours it’ll take to get a single Ascended piece and think the same thing. Even though, in the end, getting a full set of Ascended equipment could very well end up taking longer than getting a single Legendary.

The rest, we’re in agreement on, other than 2) where I think you misunderstood me – I said that a set of Ascended equipment comes in useful pieces (individual equippable pieces of equipment) whereas Legendaries are entirely useless collections of junk (gifts, crafting materials, lodestones) right up until you actually make the item.

SaintJust.9534:

There will be 20 of you per server and you can all form a guild and run Fractals all day or whatever, whilst everyone else (95+% of players) continues to play the game based on our original design philosophy"?

So in other words I paid for content I will not be able to access unless I grind like in an Asian MMO? And that’s better than simply seeing it for what it is, which is a treadmill?

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

5 tokens every 15-45 mins and you need 1350-2000 tokens per item. It makes the drop rate on badges of honor look downright generous. Don’t kid yourself, this is an Aion-caliber grind in a game that’s core philosophy was skill not gear. Ask any guild who came from Rift. I know 80 players+ that came to GW2 solely because gear was touted as cosmetic only, guess what game they aren’t playing as of today? In one fell swoop Anet galvanized the player base into content locusts and disgruntled former fans, neither of which will be around for long. If endless gear grinds are so good for player population, then why aren’t we all still playing Warhammer?

“We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

No, it’s not. All players immediately have access to the best gear in Structured PvP, so whether or not someone has ascended items for PvE or WvW… it doesn’t matter.

See, ask anyone from traditional MMOs what they hated about vertical progression and they will say, “It gave other players an advantage over me in ranked matches,” or, “My gear not being good enough prevented me from experiencing end-game content” or, “It forced me into a gear treadmill just to compete.”

Since literally none of that is an issue in Guild Wars 2, I don’t see why there is a problem.

EDIT: Oh, and before you decide to bring up something like, “But it imbalances WvW!”

WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced; that’s why it revolves around which server is more organized, has more participants, and night capping. Having ascended items in WvW won’t change anything. It’s not like one server is going to have an advantage over another because of ascended items.

Shayde.2564:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

5 tokens every 15-45 mins and you need 1350-2000 tokens per item. It makes the drop rate on badges of honor look downright generous. Don’t kid yourself, this is an Aion-caliber grind in a game that’s core philosophy was skill not gear. Ask any guild who came from Rift. I know 80 players+ that came to GW2 solely because gear was touted as cosmetic only, guess what game they aren’t playing as of today? In one fell swoop Anet galvanized the player base into content locusts and disgruntled former fans, neither of which will be around for long. If endless gear grinds are so good for player population, then why aren’t we all still playing Warhammer?

Yet another post that fails to take into account the possibility of the token amount increasing. I don’t know if it will, but they stated that you get more rewards the further in/harder it gets, so it’s entirely possible that it’ll be much quicker than you’re thinking.

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out? Do they know exactly how much it’ll require, and how you gain the stuff to make it? Can you give me a link to see where you got this information?

This one’s a good read, start from there:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Pay close attention to the screenshots.

Thank you for the link, that’s very interesting. I’m now very, very worried. But, there is one thing that we need to keep in mind. Internal testing is for testing bugs/balance, these things could be dramatically different when they’re launched. Let’s all get angry after it’s launched if it turns out to be insanely hard to get. Let’s not jump the gun.

The link to the item codes is live. Click on each ascended item in gw2db, copy/paste the code, look in-game.

None of this is test-only anymore. I hate to say it, but all the ‘QQ’ and ‘negativity’ is justified in this case.

EDIT: sorry you replied before I edited, so, for sake of redundancy:
http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8

This is all live as we speak.

Dude you need to know how code works. I could put code into the game and find an item that was there during testing or was scrapped but the code left behind. For all we know they put the code in but didn’t take it out. I can pull out a thousand games where this happened such as the Up, Down, Left, Right….. you should get the point. As well you have to consider how many items are there in game? And how many items can i make with code? I bet you i could find hundreds of items that never existed in game and were thought to have been deleted.

edit: Also the items in the link are not the same items linked and shown by Anet. Look at the Yak Ring and compare it to the one that Anet showed us. Notice the difference.

Munki.9452:

Greyfeld.7104:

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I have issues believing this will happen en masse. Considering how the only dungeons I see spammed in chat is usually the path of least resistance (AC explorables, CoF path 1 & 2, etc.) and the harder Dungeons / Paths (Arah expl, Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 post buff, etc) are all but ignored. I really have a tough time believing pugs are going to be lining up by the boat load to do content that is supposedly even more difficult than the hard stuff they don’t bother to run already.

All dungeons are currently completable in full blues, so calling for full exotics is generally not necessary. Currently, there are no gating mechanics in the game once you hit level 80.

Ascension gear, however, is a gating mechanic. Higher tier fractals will require a certain level of Infusion to withstand the Agony condition. This, by its very nature, will require players to look for people who are “properly geared.”

Honestly, I don’t believe Ascended gear will take over the game if the stat boost is so miniscule in total.

+40 vitality is just a visual aesthetic because it doesn’t allow you to mitigate anymore damage than another player at level 80.

If you can pull up (which Im sure can easily be located) official statements from A-net reps/devs stating that the game will not be gear based, that there will not be a treadmill, and that it will be comestics progession online. There is this thing, False advertising, that can go VERY bad for them. We should make sure they understand that

Suddenflame.2601:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out? Do they know exactly how much it’ll require, and how you gain the stuff to make it? Can you give me a link to see where you got this information?

This one’s a good read, start from there:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Pay close attention to the screenshots.

Thank you for the link, that’s very interesting. I’m now very, very worried. But, there is one thing that we need to keep in mind. Internal testing is for testing bugs/balance, these things could be dramatically different when they’re launched. Let’s all get angry after it’s launched if it turns out to be insanely hard to get. Let’s not jump the gun.

The link to the item codes is live. Click on each ascended item in gw2db, copy/paste the code, look in-game.

None of this is test-only anymore. I hate to say it, but all the ‘QQ’ and ‘negativity’ is justified in this case.

EDIT: sorry you replied before I edited, so, for sake of redundancy:
http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8

This is all live as we speak.

Dude you need to know how code works. I could put code into the game and find an item that was there during testing or was scrapped but the code left behind. For all we know they put the code in but didn’t take it out. I can pull out a thousand games where this happened such as the Up, Down, Left, Right….. you should get the point. As well you have to consider how many items are there in game? And how many items can i make with code? I bet you i could find hundreds of items that never existed in game and were thought to have been deleted.

edit: Also the items in the link are not the same items linked and shown by Anet. Look at the Yak Ring and compare it to the one that Anet showed us. Notice the difference.

http://www.gw2db.com/items/71363-yakkingtons-ring

51/51/10%MF, then 18/18 again (look at white text below, look at in-game link too)

It’s exactly the same as in the last screenshot of this official article by anet.

EDIT: My bad, it’s actually 1 stat point more on gw2db.

Munki.9452:

Greyfeld.7104:

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

If you’d taken the time to read how FotM worked, you’d know that your assumption is just blatantly untrue. At a certain point, you’re going to be absolutely required to be kitted in Ascended gear with X rank infusions in order to keep progressing deeper into the dungeon.

I promise you, no more than a month after release, you’re going to be seeing a lot of, “LFM FotM, full infusion only” or some variance of that.

I have issues believing this will happen en masse. Considering how the only dungeons I see spammed in chat is usually the path of least resistance (AC explorables, CoF path 1 & 2, etc.) and the harder Dungeons / Paths (Arah expl, Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 post buff, etc) are all but ignored. I really have a tough time believing pugs are going to be lining up by the boat load to do content that is supposedly even more difficult than the hard stuff they don’t bother to run already.

You think those dungeons are ignored because of difficulty? You think ppl do CoF and AC because of ease? I’m willing to bet SE among the others aren’t done moreso for the reason that many just don’t find the armors pleasing to the eye. My oppinion of course based on map/guild/forum chat.

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

The gear is not out. You can know their stats.. but you can’t know how to get it. What if they are as easy to get as exotic?

marianitten.1247:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

The gear is not out. You can know their stats.. but you can’t know how to get it. What if they are as easy to get as exotic?

They’re easy to get alright. But also extremely tedious/time-consuming/total grind. People are inside the dungeon, 1 ascended gift costs 500 tokens, 1 exo backpeice costs 1350, and go knows what the other 2 ingredients are to craft an ascended version. Thats ~2000 tokens. You get about 5 tokens every 15-30mins (5 tokens a zone completion, 3 zones a run).

Keep telling yourselves that isn’t a grind. The estimates of 70-90hrs per piece sound about right, now that players are actually entering the dungeon.

Slic.2406:

Keep telling yourselves that isn’t a grind. The estimates of 70-90hrs per piece sound about right, now that players are actually entering the dungeon.

If people are actually doing the dungeon already, do we know how fast the token rewards scale up? Because the only way it’s even “just” a bad grind instead of a mind-bendingly awful one is if it’s like 5*(Fractal level) or even 5*2^(Fractal Level).

Wild speculation is ANet’s own kitten fault. They added the beginning of an entire new tier of gear without any warning and people are rightly losing their kitten over it.

“Are there any plans to add more skill tiers, or any other meaningful progression of a character up until 80?
A: Yes we are always working to improve character progression. There are a number of things you do get after level 40 though: unlocking traits, trait tiers, gear with 3 stat combinations, exotic items and new leveling areas, but like I said we always want to add new and interesting things for people to do as they reach higher levels.”

^my favourite part of the interview

basically states the various ways other than +stats you can progress your character while implementing +stats grind

Berethos.4526:

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

It has begun! I actually read in chat, “LF1M FoTM 6, if you don’t know what 6 is don’t message me.” and LF2M fractals lvl five only. Good thing everyone has to start over week to week.