Guild Wars 2

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2mgibt/why_ascended_gear_is_a_big_joke_in_pve/

In short, if you do a lot of sub-80 content (dungeons), Ascended gear often provides no bonus over exotic.

And in real-life circumstances, where you may have two exotics, each with a sigil specialized for different situations (day/night) …that may be better than having one Ascended with a generic sigil.

I still believe ascended gear was implemented to troll all players.

Those who believed in the “we want everyone on the same gear level at 80” talk, for adding better gear that is hard to get.
Those who believed in horizontal progression, because there was hard to achieve vertical progression now.
Those who believed in vertical progression, because for all the grind involved the progression was pretty much worthless.
Those who like skins, because they were terrible.

Well played ANet!

I would have to agree with Kaiyanwan. Ascended gear is certainly not worth all the trouble for the very minor increase in some stats. I find that exotic is just fine for the majority of situations. /shrug

Personally, I’m working for ascended gear because it gives me the feeling of completion. Once I have a full set of ascended armor, trinkets, weapons with infusions (and the right skins) I will have the satisfaction of fully finishing a character. I’m sure there are many players with a similar mindset.

Ascended is still worth it. For nothing else than being account bound for those of us that have many alts. For stat capping, that’s nothing new but, at least it’s good info to share now and then for new players.

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch. “Dedicated” players beat the game, exhausting all traditional “endgame” content in roughly a week and exotics only took a day or two to acquire. There was nothing left to do and the next content update was more than a month away. Legendaries, cosmetics? Useless. In other MMOs, this is where dungeon grinding and raiding for gear would have taken place for several months. GW2 didn’t offer any of that.

ArenaNet was trying to appease the WoW/traditional player base. Combined with fractals, the idea was to create a long term grind. It wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy them however and I suspect that guild raiding will turn out much the same.

Being primarily from a WoW/traditional style MMO guild, that’s how I saw most of them play the game and quit within the first 1-3 months.

It’s really not surprising that ascended gear is for the most part useless. Now just imagine if they actually continued with it and added vertical progression through infusions like they planned.

Doom, you’re not ‘finished’ with your character until you get a full set of legendary.

Lord Kuru.3685:

And in real-life circumstances, where you may have two exotics, each with a sigil specialized for different situations (day/night) …that may be better than having one Ascended with a generic sigil.

I don’t even wear exotics in real life, just normal clothes. what a newb!

So the next grind will be Legendary Armor?

If I was going to grind for one or the other, Hoax, I would skip ascended and just grind for legendary. In fact, I guess that is what I am doing, although I don’t intentionally grind for it. I have a few ascended trinkets I am wearing, but if I upgrade anything else, it will be to legendary.

I’m not really surprised by the revelation. Down-leveling was already somewhat ineffective with exotics. Allowing Ascended to exceed exotics when down-leveled would only have made the discrepancy between max and on-level characters worse.

Ascended was put in to give players something to do, and implemented so as to have as little impact on balance as possible. It was essentially used to buy time. The question, at this point, is still, “To buy time for what?”

Agreed, Indigo……ascended stuff doesn’t make much sense…..might as well just grind for legendary

Well, it depends. For the same amount of money it would cost me to make 1 Legendary, I could outfit 4 or 5 of my characters with all Ascended gear. Since I don’t particularly like a lot of the Legendary skins (and those that I do like, don’t suit my character aesthetics), the decision was easy for me.

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch. “Dedicated” players beat the game, exhausting all traditional “endgame” content in roughly a week and exotics only took a day or two to acquire. There was nothing left to do and the next content update was more than a month away. Legendaries, cosmetics? Useless. In other MMOs, this is where dungeon grinding and raiding for gear would have taken place for several months. GW2 didn’t offer any of that.

This was shown to be a myth ages ago. There was no overwhelming forum demand for a gear grind.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I still believe ascended gear was implemented to troll all players.

Those who like skins, because they were terrible.

Well played ANet!

As complete sets, they are indeed terrible skins. Some of their individual parts, however, are among the best looking armor pieces in the game for mix-and-matching.

(Speaking purely for male characters)
Light chest
Light boots
Medium gloves
Medium shoulders
Medium chest
Medium boots
Heavy helmet
Heavy gloves

morrolan.9608:

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch. “Dedicated” players beat the game, exhausting all traditional “endgame” content in roughly a week and exotics only took a day or two to acquire. There was nothing left to do and the next content update was more than a month away. Legendaries, cosmetics? Useless. In other MMOs, this is where dungeon grinding and raiding for gear would have taken place for several months. GW2 didn’t offer any of that.

This was shown to be a myth ages ago. There was no overwhelming forum demand for a gear grind.

There was, however, a a demand for something to do. In fact, there still is…

IndigoSundown.5419:

morrolan.9608:

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch. “Dedicated” players beat the game, exhausting all traditional “endgame” content in roughly a week and exotics only took a day or two to acquire. There was nothing left to do and the next content update was more than a month away. Legendaries, cosmetics? Useless. In other MMOs, this is where dungeon grinding and raiding for gear would have taken place for several months. GW2 didn’t offer any of that.

This was shown to be a myth ages ago. There was no overwhelming forum demand for a gear grind.

There was, however, a a demand for something to do. In fact, there still is…

As should be expected of a game that has a very limited skill selection, 1 PvP mode, a RvR mode that hasn’t been significantly addressed at any point, and hasn’t had an expansion at any point in its 2 year lifespan.

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch.

It wasn’t. The same crowd that asked for new content (or endgame content/raids/mounts/holy trinity etc) was usually the first to bash anyone suggesting a vertical gear progression.
Yes, some people were bored, and asked for a new stuff. New gear tier was not what they had in mind, though. It was just something that could be implemented fast, instead of what people were asking for.

Astralporing.1957:

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch.

It wasn’t. The same crowd that asked for new content (or endgame content/raids/mounts/holy trinity etc) was usually the first to bash anyone suggesting a vertical gear progression.
Yes, some people were bored, and asked for a new stuff. New gear tier was not what they had in mind, though. It was just something that could be implemented fast, instead of what people were asking for.

Dont bet on it …
PPl in the past asked for a small gear proggresion , because everything felt static once they get to 80 and didnt have anything else to do with the game (‘’we we are getting bored with this dress-up babry game’’ !) .
And they wanted to be exclusive-hard to get-longterm (only for the few) , like in the Raid CDI few weeks ago ..

it is not really a joke.

full ascended armor is only worth to players who do a lot of high level fractals because you can slot the agony resistance upgrade to it. that’s all. stats different is very very negligible indeed.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Astralporing.1957:

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear was practically demanded shortly after launch.

It wasn’t. The same crowd that asked for new content (or endgame content/raids/mounts/holy trinity etc) was usually the first to bash anyone suggesting a vertical gear progression.
Yes, some people were bored, and asked for a new stuff. New gear tier was not what they had in mind, though. It was just something that could be implemented fast, instead of what people were asking for.

Dont bet on it …

I don’t bet. I was there then, and i still remember. If you don’t believe me, check the forum, all those posts are still there. Yes, some people were indeed asking for new gear (because there is at least one person asking for anything you could think of), but it was about as popular as asking for open world pvp (pvp, not duels) currently.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Are-MMO-players-trained-to-play-for-progression

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-desire-more-things-to-do-at-max-level

From the 1360 page > 1257 this is the 2 biggest threads with 200 replies and 5-10k views (i think thos are from 25 August of 2012 – 30/10/12)

There are also a homogous threads in thoses pages also that ‘’i have collect everything and i dont know what to do’’, with less views and replaies also

I can keep looking if you want
And i was there too .. and i remember EXACTLY events-details-ppl that i really despise .

The old geezers dont magically wake up the morning and say ‘’lets make gear progreesion for fun’’

Its like the magic carpet , for ppl that begged for mounts

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I still believe ascended gear was implemented to troll all players.

Those who believed in the “we want everyone on the same gear level at 80” talk, for adding better gear that is hard to get.
Those who believed in horizontal progression, because there was hard to achieve vertical progression now.
Those who believed in vertical progression, because for all the grind involved the progression was pretty much worthless.
Those who like skins, because they were terrible.

Well played ANet!

Let me add a few more:
It adds an entire new gear upgrade slot (infusions) that is useless most of the time. Pointless complexity.
It even fails at having any interesting, flavorful or immersive naming schemes. Oh, so all zerker ascended armory/ weaponry are tributed to Zojja? So interesting.

Ascended gear is a disappointment from all angles.

• Mechanically cold and loreless.
• Convoluted crafting paths.
• Unsatisfying sense of progression for those expecting vertical power.
• Unsatisfying sense of horizontal progression because the skins are mediocre, fully equipping alts became a nightmare and the sense of discovery and immersion is almost none-existent.
• It goes against Anet’s ideals, yet it achieved nothing. It was a desperate, rushed attempt at retaining the playerbase. At its best, it’s a glorified money sink.

Ascended gear is so easy to get now a days I don’t know why you wouldn’t get a set. The last alt I leveled went from lvl 1 to full ascended gear in 2 weeks. Too bad all my characters are light armor so I don’t get the stupid collection achievement.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ascended gear is so easy to get now a days I don’t know why you wouldn’t get a set. The last alt I leveled went from lvl 1 to full ascended gear in 2 weeks. Too bad all my characters are light armor so I don’t get the stupid collection achievement.

It is only easy if you are rich and have already gathered the account bound things. Try doing the same on a new account without buying gems to turn into gold or getting stuff handed to you. Then you can say it is ‘so easy’. Take even a month and I’ll eat my imaginary hat.

Garambola.2461:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ascended gear is so easy to get now a days I don’t know why you wouldn’t get a set. The last alt I leveled went from lvl 1 to full ascended gear in 2 weeks. Too bad all my characters are light armor so I don’t get the stupid collection achievement.

It is only easy if you are rich and have already gathered the account bound things. Try doing the same on a new account without buying gems to turn into gold or getting stuff handed to you. Then you can say it is ‘so easy’. Take even a month and I’ll eat my imaginary hat.

you can get enough ascended mats for a full set in 5-6 hours in SW thanks to the newly introduced chests.

Gold is easy to get from the TP since I already know how it works so all the buyable mats wouldn’t be an issue either, especially with the recent dip in silk price.

I think the limiting factor would be laurels and karma for the recipes. I’m not sure if those could be had within a month or not.

A month seems about right for a new account, maybe two, but I was mostly talking about alts. They aren’t a whole lot of new accounts 2 years after launch with no expansion. Mostly just vets, who should be able to easily get a set, especially with all the recent farms added to the game. (ToT bags, chest farm)

That info was already postet quite some months ago.

I always knew that ascended armor is a joke, they made you just around 1% better
from your damage stats .. at least if you don’t really care that much about your defense
values. The 5% better from armor was just the defense.

Much the same for weapons, however they have 5% from their attack and that gives
you full 5% more damage at 80 .. however at lower levels ist just around 0.5% more
thats left from the little better stats.

In the end jewlery is the only ascended gear that keeps its value on all levels, since
they are pure stats.