Guild Wars 2

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Randulf.7614:

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?

Who on earth said raids are for new players?

anet specifically stated this was their end game addition to the game.

You think a fresh lvl 80 is going to be able to do high lvl fractals or raids? NO.

They will eventually get there thou, seeing how its the only 2 things in the entire PvE system that have progression.

Windsagio.1340:

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Why don’t you bloody wait until the full details of the raids, requirements, mechanics, etc are released???

You think anyone has an answer right now? besides anet obviously.

For all we know, masteries could boost ascended gear only in raids and that is why they would be require.

Who knows. Wait and found out.

JSmooth.7654:

I stand by my statement

LFM HM DoA, LB R8

Only skill. No time. Ri-ight.

SkiTz.4590:

Windsagio.1340:

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Why don’t you bloody wait until the full details of the raids, requirements, mechanics, etc are released???

You think anyone has an answer right now? besides anet obviously.

For all we know, masteries could boost ascended gear only in raids and that is why they would be require.

Who knows. Wait and found out.

Or you know, we could talk about what it could mean instead of cheering or crying (depending on attitude).

Per your example, I hope they have more grace in their design than that.

SkiTz.4590:

Randulf.7614:

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?

Who on earth said raids are for new players?

anet specifically stated this was their end game addition to the game.

You think a fresh lvl 80 is going to be able to do high lvl fractals or raids? NO.

They will eventually get there thou, seeing how its the only 2 things in the entire PvE system that have progression.

Raids are an attractive proposition to bring in new blood to a game. Anet made a business decision to design raids for an audience wanting challenging content. Whether they are veteran or new should not matter. And to say new 80s should feel locked out by their peers would not be good for the future of raids in my opinion.

Also i get you arent in agreement, but tone down some of your aggression towards fellow posters. This thread is perfectly capable of hosting sensible, reasonable discussion from both sides of the argument.

Windsagio.1340:

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Who said this was ever a requirement as well? The word used was “should”. Big difference. And that is for the later wings. The first couple was suggested a mix would be fine. Meaning we have plenty of time to gear up and find out what will be needed.

SkiTz.4590:

Since when did raids becoming REQUIRED or FORCED onto every single player?

The entire kittening content known as RAIDS ARE OPTIONAL, THUS ASCENDED IS OPTIONAL.

Irrelevant.

ArenaNet has said that:

ArenaNet

“We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

So yeah, saying that ascended gear being grindy is ok because it’s optional is completely irrelevant – by ArenaNet’s own definition, it was not meant to be grindy. Despite how it is.

Now, it’s a well known fact that raids are a niche activity. You could even try making a game focused on raiders, but it would be nothing if not a big failure (Wildstar says “hi!”).

We also know ArenaNet is starved for resources. They have put content production for GW2 on hold while they work on the expansion, they are releasing a very expensive expansion with just four maps, they have admited that they won’t release all content with the expansion, and so on.

Ergo, what they are doing with the raid is using their (little) resources for something we all know is a niche activity.

That is pretty much a recipe for failure. There’s no way around it.

They should reduce the barrier entry for raids so it’s not as niche as raids usually are. Instead:

• They are saying themselves that only players who have ascended gear should bother with raids.

• They are saying that players need to have grinded specific ranks of the HoT masteries before bothering with raids. Which is pretty much a kind of attunement system.

The great majority of players will not bother with raids – we know that from historical data based on players’ behaviors in MMORPGs. What ArenaNet could have done is make it so at least more players would try the raid, but by increasing the barrier entry, they are condemning their own creation to irrelevance.

It’s funny to see how they keep talking about support roles being useful in raids and in WvW. With the current state of WvW and how dead raids will likely be, the predominant meta in the far great majority of the game will continue to berserker, with the Druid, the Herald and alikes being the most useless thing in GW2.

Oh noes, the content designed to be the hardest in the game by an enormous margin also recommends the best available equipment! How unusual!

Bandit.8279:

Windsagio.1340:

Still looking for an answer:

How does this ‘requirement’ make practical sense to people?

Anybody who’s played much of the upper end content knows how tiny the effective change is.

Who said this was ever a requirement as well? The word used was “should”. Big difference. And that is for the later wings. The first couple was suggested a mix would be fine. Meaning we have plenty of time to gear up and find out what will be needed.

The issue for me is that unless they significantly change the stats on ascended, or require the infusion slots, there’s no way for a requirement to be meaningful.

Ascended gear is not like raid progression gear in other games. The progression is nominal at best.

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

12 % I saw on some website …

ScribeTheMad.7614:

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.

I suspect that after watching video of skilled players making hash of the launch hard content, the devs have a pretty good idea of how skilled the better players are. To make truly hard content for them, they’d have to account for both skill and the best stats. There will be mechanics, we know that. I suspect there will also be a need for skill and top gear. What the margins will be, and whether I’m right is — of course — as yet unknown.

with coming raids I hope we can get rid of agony resistance in fractals, I cant have a set for fractals and one for raid ( maybe even 2 for Raid)

Balsa.3951:

with coming raids I hope we can get rid of agony resistance in fractals, I cant have a set for fractals and one for raid ( maybe even 2 for Raid)

I highly doubt they’ll be removing Agony Resistance requirements for Fractals.

In the end, raids are difficult until someone finds out that they can shoot the boss without getting damage in position X using class Y.

or that you can complete run X by stacking on position Y.

Gears are irrelevant. A team of full ascended can’t even do CM unless they know what are they doing.

The only reason high level Fractals need ascended is Agony.

Gearing up my main has been enough of an issue, thanks to the market revolving around bolts of damask. If they mandate having Ascended for raids, then they need to make it more accessible. None of this time limit rubbish, and none of this “go and farm materials from level 10 zones” nonsense. End game gear should take end game materials.

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

That is a different topic, ascended are in the game, they are better than exotics, significantly so, so if you want to make hard content you will balance around them.

If they continue this way I might as well buy HoT.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

Define most? The GW2 player base or the actual target audience for this hard end game content? Because everyone in my guild has all of that. Even the casuals that work 40+ hours a week. Anyone that’s been playing for a while should have at least full trinkets and maybe a weapon or two.

It’s just too easy these days to get ascended. Guild missions, fractals and Silverwastes. Our guild group has had several ascended boxes drop in our lvl 50 fractal runs just over the last few weeks! If you can’t be bothered to craft up to lvl 500 and make yourself a set of ascended armor then you don’t really want to do hard end game content I guess.

Test.8734:

So yeah, saying that ascended gear being grindy is ok because it’s optional is completely irrelevant – by ArenaNet’s own definition, it was not meant to be grindy. Despite how it is.

Is your definition of grind “anything I’m unwilling to do”?

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

Exotics work just fine in 99 percent of the game
You really gonna complain that 2 things in pve (high lvl fracs and raids) require ascended???
Elitism is equally toxic as extreme casualism

If they add tiers of gear above ascended or make every future content based on ascended, you can freely complain and i could see the concern there….but this is ridiculous.

in the 3+ years this game has been active, only fractals and soon raids have required above normal gear…. Wow.. That sure screams anet is going towards favoring elites……

Legendary Gear as rewards from Raids will have Switchable Stats as described at TwitchCon…

Otaur.9268:

Legendary Gear as rewards from Raids will have Switchable Stats as described at TwitchCon…

Same thing as legendary weapons thats been in the game since launch…. Thats not a power creep, its still ascended tier, with a quality of life perk…this type of stuff has been in the game since launch….

Kitty.1502:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

That is a different topic, ascended are in the game, they are better than exotics, significantly so, so if you want to make hard content you will balance around them.

How about those people who can’t afford ascended armor and weapons? Are they going to denied the Raid content that they have bought? Are they going to kicked out of parties?

The game designers should have sympathy for the poorer players!

SkiTz.4590:

Otaur.9268:

Legendary Gear as rewards from Raids will have Switchable Stats as described at TwitchCon…

Same thing as legendary weapons thats been in the game since launch…. Thats not a power creep, its still ascended tier, with a quality of life perk…this type of stuff has been in the game since launch….

Actually it hasn’t… Ascended gear was added later on as well as the ability to swap stats on legendaries… I’ve played since beta

Edit: Also, I never mention a power creep. I was just stating a generalization.

SkiTz.4590:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

Exotics work just fine in 99 percent of the game
You really gonna complain that 2 things in pve (high lvl fracs and raids) require ascended???
Elitism is equally toxic as extreme casualism

If they add tiers of gear above ascended or make every future content based on ascended, you can freely complain and i could see the concern there….but this is ridiculous.

in the 3+ years this game has been active, only fractals and soon raids have required above normal gear…. Wow.. That sure screams anet is going towards favoring elites……

This is why I would never recommend casual players to buy HoT.

They don’t care about the casual player community who can’t afford all these pricey ascended items to access Raid content! And no party would want them because they are not decked out in ascended equipment!

DarkSpirit.7046:

SkiTz.4590:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

Exotics work just fine in 99 percent of the game
You really gonna complain that 2 things in pve (high lvl fracs and raids) require ascended???
Elitism is equally toxic as extreme casualism

If they add tiers of gear above ascended or make every future content based on ascended, you can freely complain and i could see the concern there….but this is ridiculous.

in the 3+ years this game has been active, only fractals and soon raids have required above normal gear…. Wow.. That sure screams anet is going towards favoring elites……

This is why I would never recommend casual players to buy HoT.

They don’t care about the casual player community who can’t afford all these pricey ascended items to access Raid content! And no party would want them because they are not decked out in ascended equipment!

Totally, i mean theres no other content in this game besides raids right?everything is catered to elites now huh?….
Lets just casually forget about the 4 massive open world maps with 3 layers each they
Are adding, or the new LS season that continues as well as personal story line…

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

That is a different topic, ascended are in the game, they are better than exotics, significantly so, so if you want to make hard content you will balance around them.

How about those people who can’t afford ascended armor and weapons? Are they going to denied the Raid content that they have bought? Are they going to kicked out of parties?

The game designers should have sympathy for the poorer players!

Poor or lazy? There is a difference. Plus those players that these raids are aimed for are also those players that do high level fractals. These raids are designed as, get this, hard end game PvE content. Meaning you have done level 500 crafting, you have farmed the kitten out of Fractals and SW and are ready for the next step. That next step are these coming raids.

Not all content should be made immediately accessible and completed by all players. This is an MMO. Meaning there is a progression that you need to follow. You will notice that even dungeons have restrictions with regards to what level you need to be in order to be successful. If you don’t do high lvl fractals or any other end game content as it stands right now, which it is painfully obvious that you don’t, then you shouldn’t be able to do the final end game content which are these raids.

You have several weeks to gear up before we even see the easier more accessible raid wings. That is plenty of time to get your house in order.

Bandit.8279:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Kitty.1502:

This was expected for me, if they want raids to be difficult that means they need to balance around the best equipment other wise those with ascended would have a much easier time.

The best equipment should be exotic not ascended.

Ascended is only for those players with crafters. Non-crafters can’t make ascended weapons/armor. Not everyone likes crafting.

Furthermore, this game has gone the route of the elitists who would kick anyone from their team whose equipment is not up to par and ascended armor and weapons are still too expensive for most players.

That is a different topic, ascended are in the game, they are better than exotics, significantly so, so if you want to make hard content you will balance around them.

How about those people who can’t afford ascended armor and weapons? Are they going to denied the Raid content that they have bought? Are they going to kicked out of parties?

The game designers should have sympathy for the poorer players!

Poor or lazy? There is a difference. Plus those players that these raids are aimed for are also those players that do high level fractals. These raids are designed as, get this, hard end game PvE content. Meaning you have done level 500 crafting, you have farmed the kitten out of Fractals and SW and are ready for the next step. That next step are these coming raids.

Not all content should be made immediately accessible and completed by all players. This is an MMO. Meaning there is a progression that you need to follow. You will notice that even dungeons have restrictions with regards to what level you need to be in order to be successful. If you don’t do high lvl fractals or any other end game content as it stands right now, which it is painfully obvious that you don’t, then you shouldn’t be able to do the final end game content which are these raids.

You have several weeks to gear up before we even see the easier more accessible raid wings. That is plenty of time to get your house in order.

I don’t do high level fractals that means I shouldn’t be buying HoT then.

The whole thing is just so clueless. Why would you post that given the state of the game?

It’ll make some people happy (in a bad way) it’ll make some people mad (in a bad way) and doesn’t fit the current game engine at all.

There is no way they are skilled enough to balance it so tightly that doing raids in exotics is significantly harder than doing them in Ascended.

So my guess is that there will be a new mechanic (like agony) and new infusions to negate that mechanic, making Ascended more or less mandatory (as exotics don’t have infusion slots). This is actually the worst case scenario and IMO extremely likely.

The damage variance of weapons is 10%. In order for ascended gear to be a requirement, the raid would have to be tuned so that a full exotic party would fail the majority of the time by sheer RNG alone.

So either the raids are designed in such a way that players will automatically fail by RNG, or this is an overestimate. I’m hoping for the latter, considering that across all my toons I currently have 53 ascended weapons that I would have to make. At 100 gold each, its basically 2 more legendaries.

And here we have it:

One thing to keep in mind. A good puzzle is one that starts out hard and then after playing it and learning how it works it becomes easier. I mean when Teq came out it was hard now it’s on farm. In order do this you need a base line to balance around so you make sure the mechanics is where all the interesting decisions come from.
This next Beta Weekend you can try it out. This is the best opportunity to show us how well we did if your worried about the balance being too easy jump in and kick that encounters butt the better everyone does the more data we will have to create the proper base line and the more we can focus on each fights mechanics.
Clearly after something is on farm it’s easier to do it with less gear, or with some number of people on a quaggan tonic. I expect a spread run with maximum quaggans on youtube shortly after this post!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3mz8ta/crystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around/cvk562n

So I guess this is /thread?

Miellyn.6847:

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

But they said everyone at level 80 would have the best statistical loot in the game. They’ve gone back on that so how can we trust that they will keep to their word now?

warherox.7943:

Miellyn.6847:

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

But they said everyone at level 80 would have the best statistical loot in the game. They’ve gone back on that so how can we trust that they will keep to their word now?

You can’t. When people go back on their word on major issues (this was a heavy selling point of GW2 at release), you’d be foolish to trust them again.

lordkrall.7241:

And here we have it:

One thing to keep in mind. A good puzzle is one that starts out hard and then after playing it and learning how it works it becomes easier. I mean when Teq came out it was hard now it’s on farm. In order do this you need a base line to balance around so you make sure the mechanics is where all the interesting decisions come from.
This next Beta Weekend you can try it out. This is the best opportunity to show us how well we did if your worried about the balance being too easy jump in and kick that encounters butt the better everyone does the more data we will have to create the proper base line and the more we can focus on each fights mechanics.
Clearly after something is on farm it’s easier to do it with less gear, or with some number of people on a quaggan tonic. I expect a spread run with maximum quaggans on youtube shortly after this post!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3mz8ta/crystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around/cvk562n

So I guess this is /thread?

Can someone explain why ANET devs are communicating on other sites and not their own?

flashback

Simon ääääh Colin says:

The dungeons that we have come in two modes. The story mode is basically
pick-up-group friendly. They’re – difficulty-wise – balanced for five random
players, and those tell the story of Destiny’s Edge, the guild from the book
(Edge of Destiny). And when you finish the story version of a dungeon you unlock
the explorable version of that dungeon.

Those are intended to be the super hard, very coordinated group style content
like Slaver’s Exile, or Fissure of Woe, or the Underworld.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/sdcc/2011/dungeons-and-underwater-interview

…

symke.3105:

Can someone explain why ANET devs are communicating on other sites and not their own?

I would guess that he was not in the office but rather browsing Reddit where that thread (which was also created first and was more active than this one) was on top of the list, thus easy to find. I am not sure if the devs have access to their dev-forum accounts from home.

My speculation is that prices will initially spike as people will be doing a lot of gear crafting but then will steadily drop as additional mats flow into the market from the expansion areas.

I tend to think the opposite, because so far the expansion areas are chock full of “junk” mats like Mithril and Elder Wood, rather than the more vital mid-tier mats that ANet decided to require in huge quantities for Ascended gear. As players tend to migrate into the Jungle, supply on those core materials will likely go down, so prices would rise. The only way I see prices going down is if they include more Iron, Plat, Cotton, Linen, etc. in the new maps, OR if they change the recipes to no longer require them in such amounts.

lordkrall.7241:

symke.3105:

Can someone explain why ANET devs are communicating on other sites and not their own?

I would guess that he was not in the office but rather browsing Reddit where that thread (which was also created first and was more active than this one) was on top of the list, thus easy to find. I am not sure if the devs have access to their dev-forum accounts from home.

I guess there is a logic in what you say. Now, the real question is if that person will have the same amount of desire to be so active in communication on this site? Or any other dev for that matter.
Will we get the same information as it exists there, or do we have to use links or search to find it outside of GW2 realm?
Will we see the same willingness to actively communicate (he appears several times in one thread!) on this forum as well?

Guys she obviously meant that ascended skins will be required for raids.

It was already corrected to “recommended”. So let’s drop it now and move on. I have my doubts Raids will be that difficult to begin with. More than likely they’ll require coordination and tactics more than special gear.

basically what it means is that raid battles will be heavily based on simulation style play.
5-10% is huge in trinity games, since its designed around simulation of theoretical maximums.
in gw2 it wasnt before, but now, with unavoidable dmg healers, and tanks, it becomes a lot more feasible.

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.)

Time invested and interest is a way to separate casuals from “hardcore” players. Casuals don’t care as much and as such they probably wouldn’t bother with raids anyway or have the skill to complete them.

Yes full ascended gear is costly if you craft all of it. If you hop into fractals instead you will be getting tons and tons of armor boxes and some weapon boxes from daily rewards. Plus fractals is also a good playground to test and improve your skills so you’ll benefit one way or another anyway.

Personally I’d rather have this gating than none. You shouldn’t (won’t) be able to carry people in raids and this is one way (though maybe not the best one) to make sure the new and casual people won’t attempt to take a larger bite than they can chew and end up being a pain for the rest of the group. It’s supposed to be “end game” and as such, difficult aka not for casuals/new players. And it isn’t a mandatory grind, because nobody is forced to do raids, or fractals for that matter.

@OP Your reading & understanding of what you read skills are impressive.
….impressive indeed.

I see people keep using the WoW model reference regarding GW2s direction, but thats far from the truth. Mmorpgs are all about progression, and we have plenty of permanent progression here. Other WoW like mmos have temporary progression such as continously adding new stat tier gear, new levels, and this is the sole purpose to stay competitive and partake in activities. That makes it extra time consuming and tedious. We only have to go through this once by reaching level 80 and exo/asc wespon/gear. It’s refreshing to finally.have new content types other than the way Anet has implemented living world the last years, that could’ve gotten tedious for some, and have for many.

Ascended items are not required, they are recommended . Learn to read and understand.

Ascended gear is out an eternity, if you don’t have single character with ascended gear you’re doing it wrong. Raiding won’t be your thing then anyways, the game has lots of other stuff to offer.