Guild Wars 2

I think ascended account bound and free reset traits will not help people to change their builds, because to change your build in most cases you also need to change your set of armor / weapons to keep up with your build

currently make ascendeds set is a little hard and to make multiple sets ascended is not an option for most people, so change set is not so easy.

For this reason many people have suggested (on the CDI topic ) that ascended could change their stats (out of combat) as the legendary weapons, it would help many people to exchange their build more easily without spending a lot of time and gold to make other ascended set just to match with your current build

However that idea was impossible since they announced that ascended will be account bound

Yeah. Anet really screwed this one up.

New skills/traits lead to new builds which stop the game from becoming stale.

However, new builds lead to the necessity for new gear, which requires awful grind.

Anet has implicitly admitted this by making Ascended gear accountbound. But it’s not enough. The grind is still there. Anet can’t win, but they did it to themselves.

I’ve been saying this for ages now, but ALL gear needs the Legendary “Change Stats” feature. The crafting materials used to make an item should purely control appearance of the final item.

Why does making gear Account-bound make changing stats impossible? Don’t Legendaries have this function? I am confused.

Not being able to change stats on Ascended is the sole reason why I dont craft them.

But with the coming change ‘account bound ascended’ & uncertainty of Legendary Armors coming out, I might craft 2 sets of Ascended light armor for my toons

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah. Anet really screwed this one up.

I don’t think their intention was ever to craft one set and never bother about making a new one, that’s what Legendaries are for, but making Ascended account bound means you will have to make fewer sets for your characters.

As you say, different traits/builds require new stats, but that Knight’s Set you made for your Guardian build 1 can also be used on your Warrior build 2 while your Berserker set for Warrior build 1 can be used on your Guardian build 2.

With the old system you’d have to make 2 Knights and 2 Berserkers, now you need 1 Knights and 1 Berserkers. You WILL save a lot of money if you are really making multiple builds per character.

The only way that I can see stat changing being a functionality in Ascended gear is by some mechanic that fuses two different-stat pieces into a single one. And that has the exact same functionality as a build template would, except it would come with some economic issues.

The thing is, the TP is full of gear. There’s far, far more gear there than there will ever be characters in the game. Allowing stat changing would result in majority of that gear being obsolete. Why would anyone want to buy the more expensive Berserker exotic weapons, if they can just buy something like the Cleric’s and get the same functionality much cheaper? And there is literally no way to do that change without messing up some portion of the player base.

Ascended being account bound makes sense for those cases where you have multiple characters that would use the exact same pieces of gear. The sense-making part being that most Ascended gear is still timegated.

However, I predict that people will still complain about Ascended. Being account bound is nice, but what about those cases where you want a different aesthetic for your different characters? Either you’ll get two sets of the gear, or you’ll be spending a lot on transmutations.

maddoctor.2738:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yeah. Anet really screwed this one up.

I don’t think their intention was ever to craft one set and never bother about making a new one, that’s what Legendaries are for, but making Ascended account bound means you will have to make fewer sets for your characters.

As you say, different traits/builds require new stats, but that Knight’s Set you made for your Guardian build 1 can also be used on your Warrior build 2 while your Berserker set for Warrior build 1 can be used on your Guardian build 2.

With the old system you’d have to make 2 Knights and 2 Berserkers, now you need 1 Knights and 1 Berserkers. You WILL save a lot of money if you are really making multiple builds per character.

Accountbound Ascended gear is better than soulbound. And getting hit in the head once with a hammer is better than getting hit twice. But I prefer not to get hit in the head with a hammer at all.

It’s apparent that Anet knows there’s an issue with the Ascended grind, but IMO they underestimate how much it discourages people from trying new builds.

If you want to “try” a new build you can do it perfectly fine with Exotic and even Rare gear.

maddoctor.2738:

If you want to “try” a new build you can do it perfectly fine with Exotic and even Rare gear.

using that logic you can try a new build perfectly fine naked with lvl 1 white weapons

Shadow Blade.1324:

maddoctor.2738:

If you want to “try” a new build you can do it perfectly fine with Exotic and even Rare gear.

using that logic you can try a new build perfectly fine naked with lvl 1 white weapons

It’s not the same “logic”. Exotic and Ascended stat difference doesn’t play such an important role to know if the build you are trying is good or not. Having Ascended stats won’t turn a terrible build into a good one.

In my opinion getting best in slot gear should not be challenging, but rather learning a build and designing new ones for different situations. Making ascended and legendary account bound is a step in the right direction, especially since you can now share infusions betweens characters. However, it is not a complete solution, since

• you need multiple sets of gear for your builds
• your ascended stuff can get less useful because of balance patches, making it obsolete
• your current stats can be entirely useless for some – possible new – content, requiring another set
• you can basically completely discard your ascended gear once you get the legendary counterpart
• it is tedious to carry multiple sets of equipment

This is why I would still vote for unlockable stats on ascended items and for the use of fully unlocked ascended items as precursors. Unlocking stats can be expensive, say half as much as making a new ascended item, but at least you have a more convenient weapon afterwards.

As a consequence, balance patches have less impact, since you can keep your item and simply unlock another stat combination. This is less expensive and frustrating than making a new one and you also make some progress towards your precursor. And due to the link ascended -> legendary, you do not need to decide beforehand which path you want to pursue. Instead you start out with ascended and improve the weapon as much as you want. As a bonus, this is a guaranteed way to a precursor.