Guild Wars 2

https://twitter.com/All_Caulle/status/649239988282875907

Crystal RAID confirms ascended gear to be required for raiding – especially for the difficult wings.

Update: Please note that Isaiah Cartwright has posted on reddit that ascended is only recommended. The downfalls of releasing partial information across multiple platforms.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3mz8ta/crystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around/cvk6djq

so much for “no gear treadmill” and “we will never make ascended gear mandatory outside fractals”

I’m not sure how the hell they will balance them, considering that there is only a 5% difference in total stats. if they balance around DPS, then zerker will be required due to the DPS requirement, if they balance around mitigation, then it becomes impossible for glass cannons to survive and makes mitigation required.

the ONLY way it could work is if they balanced around celestial, or made a new type of raid infusion for armors instead of rings and necks

You are taking it out of context. “Should” and “Required” are on two different sides of the spectrum. She said Should.

And people are taking it too literally. I understand what Crystal is saying. Ascended gear and it’s stats work in having the maximum stats for end game content, however remember -actual- player skill and team cooperation will trump any gear regardless.

Having Legendary/Ascended gear and you mess up and die means you lived 1.2 seconds longer in someone in exotic gear.

I still say that tweet says nothing of player skill. If cats can solo dungeons, some of them will be three-manning the raids. In full exotic lol

Full ascended+stat infusions is more than 5% damage increase, plus take in consideration the overall damage/support increase with a full ascended raid group of 10 players.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159ml1oahEyM6zWQ-oD4XQcHsk1mI5G6tVnjk_FOeinA/edit?pli=1#gid=348011649

thanks to https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet

They’re increasing the spread between Exotic and Ascended stats to 10% with HoT. Anyone who thought “Challenging Content” meant it would be designed so you can do it comfortably while missing the top 10% of available effectiveness was fooling themselves.

Full ascended Celestial with Omni-infusions required for all raids, right?

This is the BIGGEST bait and switch I’ve fallen for, sadly. Colin with the whole, “IT ISN’T ABOUT GRIND PEOPLE, BUY OUR GAME! WE LOVE YOU!” con job when he introduced HoT, followed by the disaster of the Elite specializations has led me to lose all faith in this game.

Nike.2631:

They’re increasing the spread between Exotic and Ascended stats to 10% with HoT. Anyone who thought “Challenging Content” meant it would be designed so you can do it comfortably while missing the top 10% of available effectiveness was fooling themselves.

Source?

I worry that elitists will demand FULL ASCENDED ARMOR when in reality the benefit of adding ascended armor (to someone with ascended weapon and trinkets) is <2% damage output.

Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159ml1oahEyM6zWQ-oD4XQcHsk1mI5G6tVnjk_FOeinA/edit?pli=1#gid=348011649

“Earlier wing bosses can prob be killed by top tier players in mix of asc/ex. Last boss should be full asc.”

key words

Not surprised.

I’m not happy necessarily, but definitely not surprised. I will reserve judgement until I can try the raids and see how much ‘side story’ is tied to them.

Edit: So much for Anet’s stance on “preparing to play.” So much for not gating content behind gear, cause that’s exactly what this is.

irrumatio.4893:

Full ascended Celestial with Omni-infusions required for all raids, right?

This is the BIGGEST bait and switch I’ve fallen for, sadly. Colin with the whole, “IT ISN’T ABOUT GRIND PEOPLE, BUY OUR GAME! WE LOVE YOU!” con job when he introduced HoT, followed by the disaster of the Elite specializations has led me to lose all faith in this game.

Change is hard, and nobody is forced to raid in HoT. My perspective GW2 is going in the right direction with specializations, healing, and raids.

Wetpaw.3487:

Change is hard, and nobody is forced to raid in HoT. My perspective GW2 is going in the right direction with specializations, healing, and raids.

If you want a WoW clone, go play FFXIV. Stop pushing the devs to make this game into your amusement park. The original vision for this game is eroding so rapidly, much of it thanks to people begging for more of the same MMO tropes.

A better question, imo, is are the raid encounters (specifically enrage timers) balanced around purely offensive builds (eg Zojja’s armor and weapon sets + fully offensive traits). If so, then I do see an issue.

And, to the bigger point – while I agree in theory and understand the concept of balancing enrage timers around top end gear, a side effect is that this hinders stat diversity and experimentation in raids by most groups. Most players will not have multiple viable sets of ascended gear to use in raids.

This leads to a potentially deeper issue – GW2s equivilant of lf healer will be lf ascended healer stats – horrible step in the wrong direction. Will we have to sit around hoping that person with the right ascended stat gear logs on (basically the issue Colin continues to say that GW2 moves past with raids).

Regardless, we definitely want this game to stay away from the “gear = ability to raid” issue we see in other games. The focus should be on player skill – not how long they’ve spent grinding mats to build multiple ascended gear sets.

Turamarth.3248:

Nike.2631:

They’re increasing the spread between Exotic and Ascended stats to 10% with HoT. Anyone who thought “Challenging Content” meant it would be designed so you can do it comfortably while missing the top 10% of available effectiveness was fooling themselves.

Source?

There is no source (and that Nike isn’t the DnT Nike just incase you got confused). Last official word was stat difference is staying at 5%.

Anyways, I can’t see why so many people are surprised. They said the hardest endgame content in PvE will be raids. The explicitly said it will be harder than fractals and dungeons. We all know fractals 100 is coming and so this was going to be harder.

Even though fractals require agony, the encounter’s are all based off players having ascended stats. Also, probably only 10% of the player base have actually done fractal 50’s. These raids to me, and AN as well, always seemed the next step up.

Whether or not ascended is mandatory (i.e. there will be masteries which increase damage/ decrease damage), we’ll have to see. But simply basing the encounter’s so that the bosses/ mobs do damage against players assuming they had the BiS gear available, for the hardest content in game, seems logical.

Blaeys.3102:

Regardless, we definitely want this game to stay away from the “gear = ability to raid” issue we see in other games. The focus should be on player skill – not how long they’ve spent grinding mats to build multiple ascended gear sets.

See some of the posts above to recognize that the player population has been infiltrated by people who want grind to matter more than skill in PvE encounters. What used to be, “Play your way” and “Never worry about grinding” is now, “New players won’t be able to raid until they’ve spent months grinding out a full set of ascended gear.” Yes, months. Ascended armor has a MASSIVE price of entry in terms of raw cost, crafting requirements, time gates, etc.

I don’t think the problem is that ascended gives 5% more stats, I think the issue is agony resist (as ascended has slots in armor for extra). Didn’t they say something about it potentially seeing use outside of fractals? If that was the case in raids, then it would be required. No amount of skill can let you survive an unavoidable application of agony that insta-kills you.

irrumatio.4893:

Wetpaw.3487:

Change is hard, and nobody is forced to raid in HoT. My perspective GW2 is going in the right direction with specializations, healing, and raids.

If you want a WoW clone, go play FFXIV. Stop pushing the devs to make this game into your amusement park. The original vision for this game is eroding so rapidly, much of it thanks to people begging for more of the same MMO tropes.

The devs will follow their vision with their game.

Same argument can be said for you, I say let the devs build the game they want, and adapt or move on. MMO’s evolve overtime, nothing new here, just growing pains for some. Stay open to it and you may enjoy it.

API key gear checks are already/been in the works.

@Kronos.2560 “Agony resistance is not required.” Crystal Raid

Kronos.2560:

I don’t think the problem is that ascended gives 5% more stats, I think the issue is agony resist (as ascended has slots in armor for extra). Didn’t they say something about it potentially seeing use outside of fractals? If that was the case in raids, then it would be required. No amount of skill can let you survive an unavoidable application of agony that insta-kills you.

There is no agony, Reid confirmed it in her tweet. People are speculating though that there maybe a mastery track linked to ascended gear (still speculation).

As if veterans haven’t had 3 years to get ascended armor with how easy it is and especially with the ability to change the stats on ascended now to what you need, no one should be crying over ascended having to be slotted AT LEAST for the last wing raid. She explains you don’t need full ascended for the first 2 wings, how is this even something to complain about? Rings, Trinkets, and Amulets are extremely simple to get in this game. There is no treadmill, its been this way for almost 2 1/2 years, stop complaining. If you’re new to the game, then there is some relevance to this otherwise, they couldn’t of made it any easier to get ascended gear, especially with the billion options to get trinkets now.

Wetpaw.3487:

API key gear checks are already/been in the works.

And I’m sure you’re thrilled about it. I hope the mastery grind to be able to attempt raids without wiping is at least 400 hours.

Terra.8571:

Kronos.2560:

I don’t think the problem is that ascended gives 5% more stats, I think the issue is agony resist (as ascended has slots in armor for extra). Didn’t they say something about it potentially seeing use outside of fractals? If that was the case in raids, then it would be required. No amount of skill can let you survive an unavoidable application of agony that insta-kills you.

There is no agony, Reid confirmed it in her tweet. People are speculating though that there maybe a mastery track linked to ascended gear (still speculation).

Ah ok that makes sense. But why would you make a specialization track only for ascended gear? That makes no sense.

Brimstar.9036:

As if veterans haven’t had 3 years to get ascended armor with how easy it is and especially with the ability to change the stats on ascended now to what you need, no one should be crying over ascended having to be slotted AT LEAST for the last wing raid. She explains you don’t need full ascended for the first 2 wings, how is this even something to complain about? Rings, Trinkets, and Amulets are extremely simple to get in this game. There is no treadmill, its been this way for almost 2 1/2 years, stop complaining. If you’re new to the game, then there is some relevance to this otherwise, they couldn’t of made it any easier to get ascended gear, especially with the billion options to get trinkets now.

3 years, not a treadmill? How about the thousands of players who haven’t had “3 years” to get gear? Should we make sure they have to wait 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, or whatever arbitrary time value to grind out the gear needed to be able to play in your sandbox too?

Do you understand how long it takes for a fresh account to get full ascended, to even be considered worthy of an invite to attempt this content?

But hey, MMO fans can’t fathom a game without grind. If they could go back and re-design Super Mario Bros. to require you to stomp 1000 Goombas on 1-1 before having enough strength to jump on the axe to kill Bowser at each castle, they would.

Calcifire.1864:

so much for “no gear treadmill” and “we will never make ascended gear mandatory outside fractals”

I’m not sure how the hell they will balance them, considering that there is only a 5% difference in total stats. if they balance around DPS, then zerker will be required due to the DPS requirement, if they balance around mitigation, then it becomes impossible for glass cannons to survive and makes mitigation required.

the ONLY way it could work is if they balanced around celestial, or made a new type of raid infusion for armors instead of rings and necks

do you even know what a gear treadmill is? They said months ago ascended gear will continue to be the best equipment in the game, no higher tier…
so no there is still no gear treadmill and it isn’t even close to WoWs Raid Model

Is something with only 2 steps really a gear treadmill?

Bit of a shame. Skill will be still be the main requirement to kill the bosses, but to actually come out and make a comment endorsing Ascended will only trigger more people asking for gear checks. Gear check, inspects etc are the bane of MMO’s. They go against the spirit of teamwork and cooperation.

Currently this is an extremely small issue compared to other games, but will probably change come HoT now. This is meant to be the game which forgoes that problem and encourages teamplay not waiting around for the right classes and gear. It almost gets the former, but I’m not necs seeing the company encourage the latter.

Ascended armour is not something pleasant for most players to get. If it was, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Now, those coming into the game new, will be gated by other players requiring ascended before they can step into the raid. That’s not how GW should work.

If I am shut out of a raid, I want it to be because I am not good enough as a player, not because I don’t have someone elses perception of what items I should have on me.

Zeppelin.6832:

Is something with only 2 steps really a gear treadmill?

Consider the following:
50 steps that take 1 day each
2 steps that take 1 month each

Which is shorter?

thats the point, with a gear treadmill you get better equipment with each Raid
Ascended is the highest possible equipment, there will be no tier above it and in theory you only need one set, you can change the stats if needed in the mystic forge

I was actually worried that my fun with GW2 would probably suffer with raids, but I stand corrected. It is already immensely amusing, especially when the
“THE END IS NEAR!”
crowd appears more and more with every message.

But come on boys, that can´t really be a problem for you, no? I mean you successfully zerked through dungeons, open world and made out like bandits with the TP, so most of you will have accumulated considerable wealth and buying a fitting armor or ascended will be a cakewalk and only peanuts for you…or not?^^

By playing wvw/pvp/silverwastes we all should be able to craft a piece of ascended armor or weapon every 10-14 days. What’s the problem?

Miellyn.6847:

thats the point, with a gear treadmill you get better equipment with each Raid
Ascended is the highest possible equipment, there is no tier above it yet and in theory you only need one set, you can change the stats if needed in the mystic forge

Fixed that for you.^^

Torolan.5816:

Miellyn.6847:

thats the point, with a gear treadmill you get better equipment with each Raid
Ascended is the highest possible equipment, there is no tier above it yet and in theory you only need one set, you can change the stats if needed in the mystic forge

Fixed that for you.^^

there is no indicator that they will remove those mystic forge recipes with HoT except community rumors
and they said there will never be a tier above it, they can’t risk to break this promise

DresdenAllblack.1249:

By playing wvw/pvp/silverwastes we all should be able to craft a piece of ascended armor or weapon every 10-14 days. What’s the problem?

1 piece every 14 days for 8 pieces (6 armor pieces, 2-4 weapons; the player will acquire laurels for trinkets during that time) is 112-140 days. That’s assuming someone is a very active player.

4-5 months of gear grind is now a reasonable thing, in this game? In EQ/WoW/FFXI that’s par for the course, but in Guild Wars 2 you think it’s reasonable that people need to grind SW for at least 4 months to do raids?

Yikes.

How do you not have ascended trinkets and weapon by now? The game has been out for three years. The armor is pretty pointless unless you wanted you fractals.

There’s no way they could tune anything to require the armor because damage differences in the classes are much bigger than the damage differences in the armor. (It’s like 2 – 3%, if that)

Randulf.7614:

Bit of a shame. Skill will be still be the main requirement to kill the bosses, but to actually come out and make a comment endorsing Ascended will only trigger more people asking for gear checks. Gear check, inspects etc are the bane of MMO’s. They go against the spirit of teamwork and cooperation.

Currently this is an extremely small issue compared to other games, but will probably change come HoT now. This is meant to be the game which forgoes that problem and encourages teamplay not waiting around for the right classes and gear. It almost gets the former, but I’m not necs seeing the company encourage the latter.

Ascended armour is not something pleasant for most players to get. If it was, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Now, those coming into the game new, will be gated by other players requiring ascended before they can step into the raid. That’s not how GW should work.

If I am shut out of a raid, I want it to be because I am not good enough as a player, not because I don’t have someone elses perception of what items I should have on me.

Raids is to cater hardcore players this was request from them. Everything is GW2 is casual until now cause of the raids and of course hardcore content needs BIS gear and good skill. I really don’t understand whats the complain now.?

Nokaru.7831:

How do you not have ascended trinkets and weapon by now? The game has been out for three years. The armor is pretty pointless unless you wanted you fractals.

There’s no way they could tune anything to require the armor because damage differences in the classes are much bigger than the damage differences in the armor.

The tweet made it pretty clear that they intend to require “full” ascended. While you’re right that the DPS difference is <2% to add ascended armor to someone with otherwise fully ascended gear, if they say “full” they must have a means of enforcing that without the agony mechanic.

Welp, time to go finish leveling my Leatherworking to 500 then.
Yaaaaay….

So when can we expect Silk to become >4s? The price has already been shooting up thanks to people hoarding it for Guild Hall upgrades.

If getting an ascended weapon is too much work for you, I don’t think raids were meant for you in the first place?

What is the Guild Wars communities fascination with everything having to be available to everyone?

So many people who can’t even do Fractal 50 complaining about raids… what’s the logic there? Fractals are going up to 100 and Raids are supposed to be harder than that.

Miellyn.6847:

Torolan.5816:

Miellyn.6847:

thats the point, with a gear treadmill you get better equipment with each Raid
Ascended is the highest possible equipment, there is no tier above it yet and in theory you only need one set, you can change the stats if needed in the mystic forge

Fixed that for you.^^

there is no indicator that they will remove those mystic forge recipes with HoT except community rumors
and they said there will never be a tier above it, they can’t risk to break this promise

Oh my. If you could build bridges and make bread from broken or unfullfilled promises of Anet, especially in the area of “exotic stays always top gear”, every place would be reachable by a bridge and nobody would be hungry. ^^

Torolan.5816:

Oh my. If you could build bridges and make bread from broken or unfullfilled promises of Anet, especially in the area of “exotic stays always top gear”, every place would be reachable by a bridge and nobody would be hungry. ^^

You know, you could make a massive themepark with the amount of slippery slopes you’re using in your arguments. I have absolutely no idea where you get the idea that they are adding a new tier of gear, or removing the mystic force recipes from a tweet saying that you probably should bring ascended gear.

I mean, maybe they’re going to increase the level cap too?! Oh no!

WingLegacy.7159:

Randulf.7614:

Bit of a shame. Skill will be still be the main requirement to kill the bosses, but to actually come out and make a comment endorsing Ascended will only trigger more people asking for gear checks. Gear check, inspects etc are the bane of MMO’s. They go against the spirit of teamwork and cooperation.

Currently this is an extremely small issue compared to other games, but will probably change come HoT now. This is meant to be the game which forgoes that problem and encourages teamplay not waiting around for the right classes and gear. It almost gets the former, but I’m not necs seeing the company encourage the latter.

Ascended armour is not something pleasant for most players to get. If it was, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Now, those coming into the game new, will be gated by other players requiring ascended before they can step into the raid. That’s not how GW should work.

If I am shut out of a raid, I want it to be because I am not good enough as a player, not because I don’t have someone elses perception of what items I should have on me.

Raids is to cater hardcore players this was request from them. Everything is GW2 is casual until now cause of the raids and of course hardcore content needs BIS gear and good skill. I really don’t understand whats the complain now.?

The complaint is that gear should not be what will lock people out, skill is. What could happen based on other experiences is

- vet players of skill without ascended will be locked out
- new players of skill wont be attracted to grinding a gear before coming to GW2 or trying the raid
- unskilled players will be locked out and wont have the chance to improve themselves by trying and failing the raid, but want to keep trying.

We know these “gear check” will occur, because precedent is set in other games and it already occurs here in some areas.

Players asked for challenging content based on skill, and much discussion has been had about not requiring BIS gear.

I absolutely agree with them adding challenging content which is for the top tier player, but the gaining of ascended is not hand in hand with being a top tier player and so other players shutting them out because of it is absolutely the wrong direction and should not be encouraged. Especially by a dev.

Randulf.7614:

Bit of a shame. Skill will be still be the main requirement to kill the bosses, but to actually come out and make a comment endorsing Ascended will only trigger more people asking for gear checks. Gear check, inspects etc are the bane of MMO’s. They go against the spirit of teamwork and cooperation.

snip*

Gear/build checks are a need for some content.

It will be nice to have content within the frame of min/max coordinated play that truly represent the spirit of teamwork and cooperation.

Randulf.7614:

The complaint is that gear should not be what will lock people out, skill is. What will happen is

Wow, you have a crystal ball that sees into the future?! Maybe you should use it for something much more meaningful like winning the lottery or saving people from assassination attempts. Why are you wasting it on making extremely accurate predictions of a video game?

No guild was going to take exotic geared players into their raids anyway.

Honestly if you couldn’t be bothered to get ascended gear then you have no buisness being in a raid as you clearly aren’t serious about the game.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Honestly if you couldn’t be bothered to get ascended gear then you have no buisness being in a raid as you clearly aren’t serious about the game.

You aren’t serious about the game unless you spend 6 months gearing up! :^)

Nokaru.7831:

Randulf.7614:

The complaint is that gear should not be what will lock people out, skill is. What will happen is

Wow, you have a crystal ball that sees into the future?! Maybe you should use it for something much more meaningful like winning the lottery or saving people from assassination attempts. Why are you wasting it on making extremely accurate predictions of a video game?

I tried it on the lottery…sadly I’m still poor

You make a slightly fair point and I have edited to say “I believe will happen” since my “crystal ball” is based on 2 other MMO’s which suffered this identical problem and has had to make changes to that approach to fix this issue.

irrumatio.4893:

Brimstar.9036:

As if veterans haven’t had 3 years to get ascended armor with how easy it is and especially with the ability to change the stats on ascended now to what you need, no one should be crying over ascended having to be slotted AT LEAST for the last wing raid. She explains you don’t need full ascended for the first 2 wings, how is this even something to complain about? Rings, Trinkets, and Amulets are extremely simple to get in this game. There is no treadmill, its been this way for almost 2 1/2 years, stop complaining. If you’re new to the game, then there is some relevance to this otherwise, they couldn’t of made it any easier to get ascended gear, especially with the billion options to get trinkets now.

3 years, not a treadmill? How about the thousands of players who haven’t had “3 years” to get gear? Should we make sure they have to wait 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, or whatever arbitrary time value to grind out the gear needed to be able to play in your sandbox too?

Do you understand how long it takes for a fresh account to get full ascended, to even be considered worthy of an invite to attempt this content?

But hey, MMO fans can’t fathom a game without grind. If they could go back and re-design Super Mario Bros. to require you to stomp 1000 Goombas on 1-1 before having enough strength to jump on the axe to kill Bowser at each castle, they would.

First, there is no treadmill. Ascended gears have been and always have been and will ever be the top of the line gear in this game. Sure, they didn’t release ascended tier at the start because they wanted to wait for two months to see how the game headed. Ascended gear was already in the game in November 2012. As far as the life span of the game is concerned it has always been THE TOP tier gear.

When you use the term treadmill, you mean they will keep release new tier with every release which they hadn’t. Ascended armor and weapons were released later than trinkets but it has always been the case that ascended is the top. There is no treadmill.

Secondly, obtaining gear =/= grind. If you actually equate this. I don’t know what to say.

Third. I’ve only been playing the game for a little over 5 weeks and I already have full ascended trinkets (except backpiece) for the cost of 10g max. And 1 piece of ascended armor and an ascended weapon for FREE from free drop! By the time HoT comes out, I’ll probably in full ascended for the total cost of less than 20g for everything. You don’t need to be playing 3 years to get full ascended and it’s not a grind.

Ascended has been in the game for how long? 2 years now??

Anything since then been power creeped in terms of stats?

That is not a definition of “gear treadmill” – other games constantly have power creep in terms of weapons/armor…. I don’t see anet going above ascended…. its a good spot and there is only a couple real uses for ascended as it is (high lvl fracs and ppl who play WvW religiously)…… I see no problem adding one more reason to have ascended….

Nokaru.7831:

Torolan.5816:

Oh my. If you could build bridges and make bread from broken or unfullfilled promises of Anet, especially in the area of “exotic stays always top gear”, every place would be reachable by a bridge and nobody would be hungry. ^^

You know, you could make a massive themepark with the amount of slippery slopes you’re using in your arguments. I have absolutely no idea where you get the idea that they are adding a new tier of gear, or removing the mystic force recipes from a tweet saying that you probably should bring ascended gear.

I mean, maybe they’re going to increase the level cap too?! Oh no!

I never said anything about the recipe, that was simple speculation from the person I quoted.
I also don´t know about any new armor type, I even doubt it, but the premise that Anet can´t afford to break that promise AGAIN is just wishful thinking.

On a sidenote, I would not mind a level cap raise, I actually like open world pve ontent of GW2.^^

Dont’ even make sense, exotic and ascended stats difference is so minor.

If it require ascended. It’ll really require meta group composition.