(edited by Dungin.2983)
What is the answer? Fractions to Fractals.
Best option:
Remove ascended gear and the lazy agony mechanic, then encounter designers can DO THEIR JOBS by making the challenge more difficult through more advanced AI, both individually and through attack coordination, introducing more punishment for mistakes, and other items like this.
Second-best option:
Provide full-on ascended sets to ALL aspects of gameplay (world events, dungeon vendors, karma vendors) ASAP.
fractals are fine as “the ultimate challenge mode”, but when you make it the only source of the best gear in the game, you breed elitism and you make a large part of the community feel compelled to “complete” their character by going into these things when they otherwise would not be interested in doing something that (explative deleted) hard.
This results in people taking the lazy way out and excluding the community: “LFM FotM, please be minimum level XX, and if you can’t link all exotics you will be kicked”
Or better, people calling other people scrubs because they don’t have Ascended or are not arbitrary level XX
The obvious answer should be to make the versatility of current gear work for it not against it.
Leave ascendant and agony and all this crap as it is, but by the kitten´s tail confine it to the Fractals ONLY!
Instead just give us a new tier of (non infusion) sigils and runes equalizing the attribute gap.
Thus a major part or the current problem is mitigated as people don´t have to throw away their current gear and just have yet another set of equipment for a specific task.
Similar to having your Magic Find gear.
Probably would boost sales for Transmutation Stones too. Win-Win.