Guild Wars 2

Agemnon.4608:

Exciton.8942:

And I still remember Colin said in the announcement that GW2 should be all about playing the challenging content itself rather than setting a high requirement you need to grind for even before you start.

And now this? Such irony. Why should players even attempt this knowing it is impossible to do without gear grind?

Also if you have a non-meta statset for ascended you’ll need to start from square one even if you wanna raid.

Exactly. I have hated the ascended requirement for fractals for a long time. I can’t experiment different style w/o investing for a new ascended set.

Mmm, this tweet is intentionally worded to be controversial.

There’s no absolutes in it at all, rather it suggests instead that the raid will have progressively harder encounters that could require things above exotic.

It paints the raid designers as confident really, this is more of a challenge to us to beat the content as fast as possible, perhaps without every person in the raid with full exotics.

Gonna be interesting to say the least, we shouldn’t nitpick too hard into it.

Agemnon.4608:

Exciton.8942:

And I still remember Colin said in the announcement that GW2 should be all about playing the challenging content itself rather than setting a high requirement you need to grind for even before you start.

And now this? Such irony. Why should players even attempt this knowing it is impossible to do without gear grind?

Also if you have a non-meta statset for ascended you’ll need to start from square one even if you wanna raid.

You can change stats in the forge m8

Agemnon.4608:

Exciton.8942:

And I still remember Colin said in the announcement that GW2 should be all about playing the challenging content itself rather than setting a high requirement you need to grind for even before you start.

And now this? Such irony. Why should players even attempt this knowing it is impossible to do without gear grind?

Also if you have a non-meta statset for ascended you’ll need to start from square one even if you wanna raid.

Or just throw it in the Mystic Forge with a ~10g investment per armor piece. The change to stat-swapping made a lot of the arguments against Ascended armor quite moot in many regards. You can literally find the jankiest piece of ascended armor and turn it into Berserkers or what have you for a small amount of gold and spirit shards.

LimitBreaker.4165:

Anyone having a cry about it is just lazy af. It’s “End game” suck it up and make your ascended.

I’m not sure I get this attitude. It’s a question of time and interest more than difficulty for most people.

A full set of ascended gear costs something like 350G – 450G. I don’t know what people’s average gold-making rates are, but if you’re making 10G/hour (which isn’t a bad rate!) that’s still 35-45 hours of farming to gear up a character, with a single stat.

That’s not difficult, but it’s definitely grind, and if it’s required for raiding, it’s mandatory grind.

(You can change stats in the Mystic Forge now, but that’s something you want to do once, not back-and-forth as you experiment or do different content.)

Sleepcoma.9487:

SkiTz.4590:

You honestly believe anets new endgame content, “most challenging content” should require basic exotics or the actual endgame gear (ascended)???

This content was not created for someone to simply hit 80 and bam, waltz right into the raid in their rares/exotics and complete it like it was nothing.

What was the endgame prior to raids? Fractals. What did high lvl fractals require? ascended.

Its only logical that anything tabbed by anet as “endgame” uses the endgame armor/weapons……

People were doing Fractals in Exotics forever. Just because the folks farming fractals today are in all ascended, doesn’t mean it is required. It is just the fastest way to complete a run.

You are not completing level 50 fractals without ascended, period.

should and must are two different words.

Even I know this, not being born in an English speaking country and all.

Endgame content being tuned around endgame gear just makes sense, why are you so against it? It’s not like they just created a new tier of gear in order to raid, they are just saying “be in the best the game has”.

You can do it in exotics, nothing will stop you. Just like dungeons, exotics are recommended (notice recommend is equivalent of the word SHOULD) but people do them sometimes without gear.

In short: Your fear is baseless.

They just should add Agony damage into raids. It will prevent non exp players to enter it. They will just die in a moment, and learn.
I think, at start it will be too hard to find a normal party to run it, because everyone who hit lvl 80 few dayes ago will think that he is a good player and can handle everything. The same problem have TA Aether now for example(a lot of ppl who just don’t know what to do there, and even how to play).
Difference between asc and exo gear is 4-6%. The only reason to have asc gear NOW—Agony.

White Hunter.3416:

They just should add Agony damage into raids. It will prevent non exp players to enter it. They will just die in a moment, and learn.
I think, at start it will be too hard to find a normal party to run it, because everyone who hit lvl 80 few dayes ago will think that he is a good player and can handle everything. The same problem have TA Aether now for example(a lot of ppl who just don’t know what to do there, and even how to play).
Difference between asc and exo gear is 4-6%. The only reason to have asc gear NOW—Agony.

That’s not true. I make ascended mostly for WvW. It’s 5% base damage increase and more stats. The end result is almost one GM trait worth.

Redenaz.8631:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Anyone having a cry about it is just lazy af. It’s “End game” suck it up and make your ascended.

I’m not sure I get this attitude. It’s a question of time and interest more than difficulty for most people.

A full set of ascended gear costs something like 350G – 450G. I don’t know what people’s average gold-making rates are, but if you’re making 10G/hour (which isn’t a bad rate!) that’s still 35-45 hours of farming to gear up a character, with a single stat.

That’s not difficult, but it’s definitely grind, and if it’s required for raiding, it’s mandatory grind.

(You can change stats in the Mystic Forge now, but that’s something you want to do once, not back-and-forth as you experiment or do different content.)

Yea sure it’s grindy but not impossible, farming sw makes around 20g+ an hour.

Astralporing.1957:

Terra.8571:

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.

Ascended acquisition was so far balanced around it not being required for any content beyond fractals – and even fractals weren’t balanced around ascended stats, merely around AR.
If the above doesn’t hold true, then all the acquisition methods need to be rebalanced in order to make that tier more easily obtainable.

They’re not required now afaik. The tweet never said it was physically impossible to do in exotics, she just said she think’s ascended will be needed because that’s what the Dev’s have required to beat them.

These are the same Dev’s that constantly underestimate the player base – who would have though most dungeons could be done in under 10mins, many under 5mins. They never thought legendaries would be made within 6 weeks or that all their content would be chewed through in a couple of months. Some of the hardest bosses this game are even being soloed e.g. fractal 50 bosses or Lupicus.

Even recently, they release a skill like WHaO without realising the infinite boon uptime that can be gotten with it. Dev’s make mistakes, I think at the very least, they needed to balance this content around ascended stats. I bet, unless there’s some physical link to ascended gear e.g. % damage mitigation, in time, some of this raid content will be farmable with pug exotics. We’ll see, but bottom line is they are balancing content on ascended, that’s a logical thing for the most difficult content.

Ascended are not needed to enter the raid. Just expect many wipes until the community masters them.

Windsagio.1340:

Until you find out it’s gated on AR

Windsagio.1340:

Also the math isn’t cumulative like that. It essentially can’t be the stat difference, it’s not significant.

Agony is most likely the way they’re going to gate it, although I expect OUTRAGE.

The other possibility is that “Ascended Gear Required” is a PR lie to make raids sound more hardkore.

They have already stated that Agony Resistance will not be needed.

https://twitter.com/All_Caulle/status/649248858195668992

Terra.8571:

Astralporing.1957:

Terra.8571:

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.

Ascended acquisition was so far balanced around it not being required for any content beyond fractals – and even fractals weren’t balanced around ascended stats, merely around AR.
If the above doesn’t hold true, then all the acquisition methods need to be rebalanced in order to make that tier more easily obtainable.

They’re not required now afaik. The tweet never said it was physically impossible to do in exotics, she just said she think’s ascended will be needed because that’s what the Dev’s have required to beat them.

These are the same Dev’s that constantly underestimate the player base – who would have though most dungeons could be done in under 10mins, many under 5mins. They never thought legendaries would be made within 6 weeks or that all their content would be chewed through in a couple of months. Some of the hardest bosses this game are even being soloed e.g. fractal 50 bosses or Lupicus.

Even recently, they release a skill like WHaO without realising the infinite boon uptime that can be gotten with it. Dev’s make mistakes, I think at the very least, they needed to balance this content around ascended stats. I bet, unless there’s some physical link to ascended gear e.g. % damage mitigation, in time, some of this raid content will be farmable with pug exotics. We’ll see, but bottom line is they are balancing content on ascended, that’s a logical thing for the most difficult content.

Ascended are not needed to enter the raid. Just expect many wipes until the community masters them.

TA Aether sayes hello.
Still hard, really hard to find group without firsttimers, or crazy elitists.

LimitBreaker.4165:

Yea sure it’s grindy but not impossible, farming sw makes around 20g+ an hour.

Yeah, because we should balance everything around a broken farm that will eventually get nerfed anyway.

Am I pleased? No. Making Asc. armor/weapons is the dullest way to get top tier gear I’ve ever seen.

Am I surprised? No. If they tuned for Exotic, raids would be too easy for groups in full Asc.

Since a raid will be available in the upcoming beta weekend, we can test it. Take groups in with all exotic, all ascended, and mixed and see what happens. Maybe it turns out some of the bosses inflict agony, and then yeah, you need ascended gear.

But I’ve gotten probably 3-4 drops of ascended armor chests in the last year and used them for light and medium coats and pants. Making the other three parts really isn’t too bad. Plus, now that you can change stats on ascended, you can edit your existing gear if need be.

Since raids are what gets you legendary armor, I’m not so surprised at this kind of requirement.

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

This thread should be about how ascended stats can make a difference.

Terra.8571:

Astralporing.1957:

Terra.8571:

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.

Ascended acquisition was so far balanced around it not being required for any content beyond fractals – and even fractals weren’t balanced around ascended stats, merely around AR.
If the above doesn’t hold true, then all the acquisition methods need to be rebalanced in order to make that tier more easily obtainable.

They’re not required now afaik. The tweet never said it was physically impossible to do in exotics, she just said she think’s ascended will be needed because that’s what the Dev’s have required to beat them.

SO? Devs think it is required now. The same devs that earlier balanced ascended acquisition around it not being required. Since by their own admission that previous assumption no longer holds true, i believe some rebalances are in order now.

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

There’s no Legendary Armor rewards in FotM, mate.

If AR isn’t required, I’m sure you can just skip the ascended armor, just get the weapons for the base dmg increase and trinkets because they’re easy to get.

Should lessen the cost of gearing for raids if they’re tuned for full ascended stat levels.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Am I pleased? No. Making Asc. armor/weapons is the dullest way to get top tier gear I’ve ever seen.

Am I surprised? No. If they tuned for Exotic, raids would be too easy for groups in full Asc.

Only if the difficulty is entirely artificial (i.e. bumping mobs HP up, making them all elites, making them hit harder, or knock down on all attacks, etc.) instead of requiring skill via mechanics.

The fact that they’re opting for the former isn’t surprising, but it’s just a gear check (gear check != skill check); not in any way something that makes the content more challenging, just harder/more tedious.

It makes even less sense if you need that 5% difference in raw power to do raids.

There are already more than that level of power difference between professions. How are they able to fine tune this to make sure every profession is viable.

IndigoSundown.5419:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

There’s no Legendary Armor rewards in FotM, mate.

so ppl are complaining about not having ascended gear to get ascended gear ?
is that it ?

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

IndigoSundown.5419:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

There’s no Legendary Armor rewards in FotM, mate.

so ppl are complaining about not having ascended gear to get ascended gear ?
is that it ?

No, not to get ascended gear. To get exclusive rewards (skins, etc). Which seem to get locked out now not only behind skill, time and organizational check, but also behind a gear check on top of that.

Raids are going to be semi-dead content within a timeframe of a year.

Look at TA Aether path (hardest/longest Dungeon), high level Fractuals (50+), Arah (Hardest Vanilla Dungeon).

These things don’t have large participation. Fractals 50 might be done by 10% of the playerbase, Aether less so and Arah maybe a bit moreso.

These are, right now the ‘hardest content’ in the PvE game. And the playerbase by and large, isn’t playing them.

The thing is a good 90% of Guild Wars 2 playerbase are just like 95% of the game – casual players. They don’t want to do the hardest content.

And while some excuses can be made for Aether (Pointless/Long) and Arah (Long/Pointless) Fractals are the end-game right now for PvE and once you get up to a certain scale (Like 41+) the population starts thinning considerably.

If Raids are as challenging as they are being hyped up to be (Mostly by players with side comments from aNet people) then it’s going to be content the majority simply never bothers with.

So two things are going to happen:

The people doing the Raids quit due to boredom (Doing the same thing over and over and over) and Raids eventually die;

aNet nerfs Raids to bring in my players, thereby lessening the challenge of said content.

I know the GW2 playerbase. These people will play this game and do whatever casuals do (World Boss, SW Grinding, etc.) until they get bored then they’ll move on to the next game. They won’t enter Raids or level 80+ Fractals.

And the people doing that content will make it all they do. You’ll have them log in once a week to run their raid (‘Raid Night’) and eventually a new shiny will appear and they won’t log in at all.

I cannot see Raids being successful in this game with this playerbase.

Astralporing.1957:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

IndigoSundown.5419:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

There’s no Legendary Armor rewards in FotM, mate.

so ppl are complaining about not having ascended gear to get ascended gear ?
is that it ?

No, not to get ascended gear. To get exclusive rewards (skins, etc). Which seem to get locked out now not only behind skill, time and organizational check, but also behind a gear check on top of that.

Shocker, its not easy so ppl like you start complaining and voicing your concerns on “why can’t i just get what i want, how I want, instead of playing by anet’s rule”

its endgame content , its the most challenging content anet has created to date…
You think you should be able to waltz in with a fresh lvl 80 char in yellows/oranges and get access to the all the rewards with no effort at all huh?

As stated by anet – this is what they wanted to create in terms of their vision of “endgame”

endgame content (fracs,raids) requiring endgame gear (ascended) – logical..don’t see a problem here.

Skill,time and organizational gate…right lets have the most challenging thing anet created become so simple that you can just pug and sleep through it like its CoF1.

Get a clue dude, this content isn’t just another freaking open world map or mini dung….theres plenty of that coming your way for all you “easy , laid back” players.

Astralporing.1957:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

IndigoSundown.5419:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

don’t get it, why ppl are complaining ?
fractals need ascended gear, raids seems to need it too. whats the problem ?
fractals were the end game for pvers for years and you don’t see ppl complaining about the gear requirement.

There’s no Legendary Armor rewards in FotM, mate.

so ppl are complaining about not having ascended gear to get ascended gear ?
is that it ?

No, not to get ascended gear. To get exclusive rewards (skins, etc). Which seem to get locked out now not only behind skill, time and organizational check, but also behind a gear check on top of that.

aah ok ty
but fractals will also get exclusive skins and will be locked out behind skill, time, organization and gear.
still no one is complaining.

lordkrall.7241:

Windsagio.1340:

Until you find out it’s gated on AR

Windsagio.1340:

Also the math isn’t cumulative like that. It essentially can’t be the stat difference, it’s not significant.

Agony is most likely the way they’re going to gate it, although I expect OUTRAGE.

The other possibility is that “Ascended Gear Required” is a PR lie to make raids sound more hardkore.

They have already stated that Agony Resistance will not be needed.

https://twitter.com/All_Caulle/status/649248858195668992

Then it’s PR bullcrap. The effective difference in ascended stats is just that insignificant.

This is BULLKittens and here is why. Currently I’ve one toon with Ascended full armor and weapons that’s Cleric’s gear for my warrior. I did this to play a Flag wielding tank, not to zerk. This has take a very long time to create and as much as I enjoy the toon, I don’t play him very often. Now here is the issue, if I want to raid, I have to play THIS toon and nothing else. Casual players will never be allowed into HOT raids even if they are a good player. Not due to skills but due to gear.

You’ve just re created the mess that was WOW years ago, and created such elitism few will be able to run the content.

Build Eliteism
Class Eliteism
Gear Eliteism

Please re consider the difficulty of the content and consider toning it down some. Don’t create another Domain of Anguish Absurdity where only the top 1% can see or play the content upon release.

Windsagio.1340:

lordkrall.7241:

Windsagio.1340:

Until you find out it’s gated on AR

Windsagio.1340:

Also the math isn’t cumulative like that. It essentially can’t be the stat difference, it’s not significant.

Agony is most likely the way they’re going to gate it, although I expect OUTRAGE.

The other possibility is that “Ascended Gear Required” is a PR lie to make raids sound more hardkore.

They have already stated that Agony Resistance will not be needed.

https://twitter.com/All_Caulle/status/649248858195668992

Then it’s PR bullcrap. The effective difference in ascended stats is just that insignificant.

I’ve noticed more and more that 90% of this community doesn’t actually understand the difference between exotic and ascended, they just repeat what incorrect information somebody else told them.

Laggo.8973:

Windsagio.1340:

lordkrall.7241:

Windsagio.1340:

Until you find out it’s gated on AR

Windsagio.1340:

Also the math isn’t cumulative like that. It essentially can’t be the stat difference, it’s not significant.

Agony is most likely the way they’re going to gate it, although I expect OUTRAGE.

The other possibility is that “Ascended Gear Required” is a PR lie to make raids sound more hardkore.

They have already stated that Agony Resistance will not be needed.

https://twitter.com/All_Caulle/status/649248858195668992

Then it’s PR bullcrap. The effective difference in ascended stats is just that insignificant.

I’ve noticed more and more that 90% of this community doesn’t actually understand the difference between exotic and ascended, they just repeat what incorrect information somebody else told them.

I love that this post could be read two entirely diferent ways

We could always revisit this thread for a good laugh or ten.

I love being right, all the time, every time.

Astralporing.1957:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Yea sure it’s grindy but not impossible, farming sw makes around 20g+ an hour.

Yeah, because we should balance everything around a broken farm that will eventually get nerfed anyway.

It’s an example of how kitten easy it is to make gold now. They should even take it a step further and put agony in raids lmao.

Jesus Christ the QQ is real haha. It’s so funny how people cry over kitten like this then IF anet gives in and let’s everyone play with scrub exotics people will just rush through the content and be like “boring game, nothing to do, No end game wow is better gg ez”

I’m fine with this. The problem is how lame and boring getting Ascended gear is.

Any possibilities of a “decent” drop chance from you know….actually killing Monsters and them dropping gear? Novel concept right?

Or is it just going to be farm farm farm gold like an Asian MMO?

Judge Banks.9018:

We could always revisit this thread for a good laugh or ten.

I love being right, all the time, every time.

Sure, unless the devs are underestimating player skill which has happened pretty consistently.

I remember, I believe it was in WoW, that when designing the most difficult content the testing would involve a lot of increasing the numbers and making things more difficult to succeed. However, once the encounter was not able to be beaten even by the creators after the latest attempts, they appended more numbers and then shipped the content out.

Players are the best stress testers of any game, they will find out the smallest bugs and glitches and environmental defects and exploit them, they will come up with strategies and minor adjustments not even content creators would imagine. To even consider Player Skill in the equation amounts to creating content you, and someone better than you, quite possibly are on the lower end of the range of skills out there.

I think the devs are underestimating us greatly, unless the ascended items are explicitly and mechanically superior due to some outside influence affecting them and not exotic gear. I doubt that kind of thing would happen, we will see.

Meh, I’m disapponited but doubt they’ll change it. I’ll take skill over stats anyday. :p

Substatic.6958:

Now for them to put in a way to obtain Ascended Gear that doesn’t involve becoming a bot. Any possibilities of a “decent” drop chance from you know….actually killing Monsters and them dropping gear? Novel concept right.

Or is it just going to be farm farm farm gold like an Asian MMO?

I’ve got a lot of ascended armor/weapon boxes and trinkets from playing. Just do high level fractals they drop quite often.

love this thread.
imagine if the raids take 4 hours to complete.
sure ppl will also complain.

Calcifire.1864:

so much for “no gear treadmill”

a treadmill is something repeated, not something done ONCE

As always it comes down to “Wanting” and “Needing”
Most people kitten n whine because they want x y z and don’t really need it and moan because it’s hard to get.
While those who need it because their doing harder content have to face the fact that to be rewarded they have to work for it (grind) otherwise if it was just handed to them it would feel unrewarding.
If you WANT to do High level Raiding/Fractals.. you’re gonna NEED high end stuff.. If you don’t plan to.. then you don’t NEED high end stuff, but you just WANT it because it looks cool.

I wanna keep going back to “How can that NEEDING be true?”

The stat difference is insignificant.

Windsagio.1340:

I wanna keep going back to “How can that NEEDING be true?”

The stat difference is insignificant.

Maybe they change ascended gear to have stat swap like legendaries. x3

Astralporing.1957:

LimitBreaker.4165:

Yea sure it’s grindy but not impossible, farming sw makes around 20g+ an hour.

Yeah, because we should balance everything around a broken farm that will eventually get nerfed anyway.

If it gets nerfed to be more in line with the rest of the game no one would go anymore though since the monsters have cheap mechanics (chain knockdowns, high damage, and quite tanky) so it’ll make Orr far more attractive.

Heh

All my toons have ascended weapons, often same weapon types with various stats and sigils, all have ascended rings, trinkets, backs, amulets. Only armor is what is left, most are in mix of ascended / exotic, I have only 3 full sets.

In addition I have been hoarding any ascended chests (got 8 now, 1 weapon and 7 armor) and ascended crafting mats since expansion was announced.

Just not seeing any issues here.

if anyone is THAT new to the game then it will not hurt them doing otehr stuff first as this is supposed to be very high skill / coordination req. Likewise, with unskilled or less skilled players. This content is just not for them if they just come in “fresh off the boat” sort of speak. You have to learn the technical mechanics of all your skills, then practice their execution, then repeat that process for each stage of the encounter. Its quite a lot. And guess what ? Running the correct build to the correct situation, gear included, is part of player skill. This is afterall primarily a skill check, this aspect of it included.

In addition, it depends on the guild. Guilds will help out their members in every capacity cutting down drastically on the time requirements, unless the individuals turn out to be “not worth” the help from within their own guild, in which case they will likely have the same exact problem everywhere they go and in just about every game within this genre. Just write them off as a “total loss”.

Sykper.6583:

Judge Banks.9018:

We could always revisit this thread for a good laugh or ten.

I love being right, all the time, every time.

Sure, unless the devs are underestimating player skill which has happened pretty consistently.

I remember, I believe it was in WoW, that when designing the most difficult content the testing would involve a lot of increasing the numbers and making things more difficult to succeed. However, once the encounter was not able to be beaten even by the creators after the latest attempts, they appended more numbers and then shipped the content out.

Players are the best stress testers of any game, they will find out the smallest bugs and glitches and environmental defects and exploit them, they will come up with strategies and minor adjustments not even content creators would imagine. To even consider Player Skill in the equation amounts to creating content you, and someone better than you, quite possibly are on the lower end of the range of skills out there.

I think the devs are underestimating us greatly, unless the ascended items are explicitly and mechanically superior due to some outside influence affecting them and not exotic gear. I doubt that kind of thing would happen, we will see.

They actually employed a popular guild from Everquest to test some of their earlier raid content, however in taking part they were specifically forbidden from doing it in live until someone else had done it. I forget who they were, but I remember it was related to quel’serrar somehow.

I’d imagine that these people eventually became tired of this after BWL, and then PTR’s became a thing.

Seera.5916:

Rabe.2456:

Are we talking about Agony Resistance or what’s the big deal about Ascended Gear? I don’t get it. If you tell me 90 main stat points make a real difference then I wonder what’s going on with the design.

Well, 90 may not be a lot. But what about 900 when multiply that across the full group needed for raids? 900 may be a noticeable difference.

The whole party wide stat boost (excepting the increased weapon damage, which I can see as highly advised) could easily be lost by bringing a couple of thieves instead of elementalists.
Game classes are just not designed to be exposed to such a heavily number based challenge.

If full ascended is really NEEDED, it must be related to some new infusion. There’s no other logical explanation.

Guys we’ve all been in full Ascended dungeon runs which go a lot slower/faster than others – the difference player skill and knowledge makes is the primary driver of damage.

If you still don’t have an Ascended character then you’re not really looking for the best performance and raids will need people with that desire (desire to pull the best effectiveness from equipment and play – yes people with Ascended don’t necessarily have this but I would say people that do have this drive won’t be running around without Ascended) .

They haven’t tested it against a very large spread of top level players and so the design is just a guess/aspiration at the moment.

You’ve had years to get Ascended I can’t believe suddenly now you’re upset you might not be doing your best in group content (cause you clearly haven’t been doing it up until now…).

Getting Ascended doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do the raid, but it shows a bit of commitment to doing the best you can in there – thats the mindset raids need.

Coulter.2315:

You’ve had years to get Ascended I can’t believe suddenly now you’re upset you might not be doing your best in group content (cause you clearly haven’t

“We” have, but what about new and future players? This was a mistake Lotro made with Radiance. It had to remove it. TSW had a system which encouraged BIS gear, but didn’t require it. The community evolved and blocked anyone not in full BIS, which was ridiculous because you needed to run the instances to get the gear and as time went on, new players became more and more shut out from instances. 3 years on Funcom realised the problem and have basically handed out BIS gear for doing dailies, pvp and questing just to get new players into its instances.

Whilst GW2 doesn’t suffer in exactly the same way, getting ascended is not a fast process and is daunting for new players. People cheered when raids were added, but where is the future in making more raids if new and future players are unable to access them until they have gone through a drawn out process of obtaining what the community demands they bring with them?

If metrics show people not entering the raid, then why will they invest in more?

Since they want to go down this BIS route for the raids, then the clear solution would be to make ascended more accessible to get.

Suggestions for better or worse:

- better drop rate at bosses and in wvw
- less mats required at crafting
- Change cultural T3 perhaps to ascended
- Pvp tracks for ascended
- Guild missions to have a decent chance at ascended
- improve fractal drop rates
- lower the laurel costs for trinkets (slightly)
- Final reward for story in HoT ascended (once per account)

Regardless off good/bad ideas, leaving ascended obtaining in its current form is foolhardy if the game wants to bring new and future players into the game without feeling like they are shut out.

Of course if the community behaves and doesn’t block ppl not in full ascended, this whole issue will non-starter, but that’s a glorious situation I have little optimism will occur.