Guild Wars 2

Fox.3469:

After trying out the raid encounter, i think it will be perfectly possible for groups with perfect coördination to run this in exotics, however anything less then the best groups and it becomes a problem. Full ascended groups hit the enrage yesterday because they didn’t have a grasp of the fight enough to actually be able to do enough dps in that time.

This isn’t meant to be pug content anyway so if your guild is ok with you rocking some exotics then that’s ok.

keep in mind, the first part of the first raid, that devs said they reccommend at least A MIX of ascended.
Its likely the other bosses in the raid will be more difficult.
this is exactly on par with the first dev prediction of a reccomended mix.
Later ones will most likely expect even more tight play.

basically, ascended WILL be enforced by players, except when they want to test their own limits of top teir skill.

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

you are wrong. The dungeon groups that require exotics are not the crappiest ones. High tier players generally dont reduce their chances of success unless they like a specific person, or decide to try to do something just for kicks.

the reality is weather its literally required or not, the content is difficult enough no one is going to willingly kitten their group with full exotic guys.

to be clear this is NOT the old game, this is a dps check that is tricky for coordinated dungeon runners. They arent going to be taking exotic people on average.
and pick up groups, or small groups working together, definately wont.

If you really think they will, you have not played MMOs very much. I have never seen groups demand the minimum requirements for the best players for any difficult content. Heck they rarely allow it for average difficulty content

i have been in multiple fractal groups where they kick the guy who barely has enough AR to survive, its never about whats possible best case, but about whats probable.

You converted ‘ascended’ to ‘exotic’ in there, not quite sure how.

The rest of it, ‘what and what’?

~~~

Let me try again, got lost in the salad there;

1) It’s exceptionally unlikely that ascended vs exotic gear will be a significant determinator in speed as compared to group makeup and player skill.
2) A player that doesn’t understand the numbers or game system enough to understand that fact isn’t worth listening to.

~~~

AR is a special case, but otherwise Ascended gear is one of the very last things you should be worrying about in building a team. Thus, I feel comfortable saying ‘if someone were to demand that it would be safe to dismiss their opinions’ – while still abiding by their stupid LFG criteria if applicable. (you’re probably better off not grouping with them though)

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

you are wrong. The dungeon groups that require exotics are not the crappiest ones. High tier players generally dont reduce their chances of success unless they like a specific person, or decide to try to do something just for kicks.

the reality is weather its literally required or not, the content is difficult enough no one is going to willingly kitten their group with full exotic guys.

to be clear this is NOT the old game, this is a dps check that is tricky for coordinated dungeon runners. They arent going to be taking exotic people on average.
and pick up groups, or small groups working together, definately wont.

If you really think they will, you have not played MMOs very much. I have never seen groups demand the minimum requirements for the best players for any difficult content. Heck they rarely allow it for average difficulty content

i have been in multiple fractal groups where they kick the guy who barely has enough AR to survive, its never about whats possible best case, but about whats probable.

You converted ‘ascended’ to ‘exotic’ in there, not quite sure how.

The rest of it, ‘what and what’?

~~~

Let me try again, got lost in the salad there;

1) It’s exceptionally unlikely that ascended vs exotic gear will be a significant determinator in speed as compared to group makeup and player skill.
2) A player that doesn’t understand the numbers or game system enough to understand that fact isn’t worth listening to.

~~~

AR is a special case, but otherwise Ascended gear is one of the very last things you should be worrying about in building a team. Thus, I feel comfortable saying ‘if someone were to demand that it would be safe to dismiss their opinions’ – while still abiding by their stupid LFG criteria if applicable. (you’re probably better off not grouping with them though)

Ok, you dont really get it.

The “meta” for requirements is never based around the minimal requirements for an encounter by the top end players.

Yes, some of the best teams may not need ascended. They will be using them anyway, and expecting everyone in their groups to have it.

Yes skills are more important, but the gear is the mimimum they expect from every player.

Have you ever played another MMO raid like content?

sure you can beat the toughest contest with an underleveled, undergeared guy in your group. BUT NO ONE IS GOING TO WANT TO BRING THAT GUY, unless he is the lovable bum in the guild everyone loves having around.

Go ask people in the Dungeon subforum how much zero ascended people they want to bring with them into raids.

You can dismiss the standards that players will enforce on everyone as mathematically unsound as much as you want, they will still kick you, and ask you to ping your gear.

Have high end zerker teams been taking people in less than exotics into dungeons? And that is much further from required than ascended in the easiest part of the first raid.

Do you really think most raid gear r

Short version: Any content where people have difficulty, THE FIRST THING they will seek to do is increase their chances numerically. After they are sure that gear is a non factor, then they will start focusing on skills.

And in exchange, I"m saying that it’s exceptionally difficult to tune an encounter for ascended gear Unless they’ve already tuned the encounter for a specific raid makeup and player ability level.

For ascended gear to be meaningful it has to be so absurdly hard that many dungeon guilds can’t do that. Some people would love that, but I doubt Arenanet would be so exclusive with it.

PS: I get that people think it’s important, people think “meta” is important too. It’s a player construct not required for the content. And “meta” is many times more important to encounter efficiency than ascended vs exotic gear will ever be!

I don’t care what rules the players set, it’s on them to do what they wish. Thinking the raids are going to need the gear, or that it’s going to be a very significant factor in raid success isn’t really thinking it through.

~~~

I should add, that it’s likely the first dozen or 3 raids to beat this stuff will be in ascended — mostly because they already have it. The people likely to be able to beat this content quickly are likely the players who already play alot and who already have that ascended gear + plenty of mats.

Windsagio.1340:

I don’t care what rules the players set, it’s on them to do what they wish. Thinking the raids are going to need the gear, or that it’s going to be a very significant factor in raid success isn’t really thinking it through.

~~~

I should add, that it’s likely the first dozen or 3 raids to beat this stuff will be in ascended — mostly because they already have it. The people likely to be able to beat this content quickly are likely the players who already play alot and who already have that ascended gear + plenty of mats.

I agree with you, it’s more of a time thing imo. When people grasp the content and get it completely, you actually get room to work with the time you actually have over, but as of the start of the raids, of course having that 1% more damage may just mean that the boss dies instead of your group wiping.

When pushing an enrage mechanic it enforces better gear, but once the fight gets mastered, and we do efficient damage, you will have some time to work with.
(take the vale guardian, right now many people in full ascended are hitting the enrage, but when you master the fight, when you don’t loose any dps catching the orbs for example because a ranged group nails that completely, then you start having extra time to work with.)

I’m pretty sure some guilds will see it as a hard mode raid challenge, to clear every boss with exotics after they cleared the wing in ascended, wich is cool that it’s possible because of the difference between the 2 stat sets being so small.

After reading several posts about groups doing raids and having hard times killing Boss before timer was out, I am wondering if Berserker gear is still not the gear to use. But on the other hand, we are supposed to use different gear in raids. Gear that gives you more survivability.
So, we have the necessity for survival on one hand and the necessity for DPS on other. Does that mean we will need two sets of ascended gear for raids?
One for trash mobs (survival) and the other for Bosses (DPS check).

Osu.6307:

Does anyone else remember when beating Teq was considered difficult?

Nope.

in fact, I remember beating it on day 1 of Tequatl Rising, as I’m sure a large number of other players on Desolation and Blackgate will.

it wasn’t difficult, just un-coordinated, people were failing because of trolls on the cannons and nobody defending the non-megalaser objectives because we all wanted the achievement for pushing the button.

plus, this was before ascended weapons and armor were things (well weapons were introduced two weeks earlier and VERY few people had them), so we now generally overgear teq as well.

Windsagio.1340:

1) It’s exceptionally unlikely that ascended vs exotic gear will be a significant determinator in speed as compared to group makeup and player skill.

True. But it can be a significant determinator if the content is already balanced around specific group makeups and a relatively high level of skill. Look at the Vale Guardian kills so far (there are some nice youtube videos). All the groups were running almost pure dps builds, weren’t making visible mistakes, and yet all came within less than15% of the enrage timer.

Incidentally, 15% is the damage difference for dps setups between full ascended and exotics.

Windsagio.1340:

AR is a special case, but otherwise Ascended gear is one of the very last things you should be worrying about in building a team.

In this case, it seems it is the most important part. You can make do with a bit lower skill, but having wrong gear in raids will fail you even more surely, and do it before you even start the encounter.

Windsagio.1340:

And in exchange, I"m saying that it’s exceptionally difficult to tune an encounter for ascended gear Unless they’ve already tuned the encounter for a specific raid makeup and player ability level.

It seems they did exactly that.

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

The crafting time for making Ascended isn’t that big a deal, the issue is more the cost of the materials (and the cost of leveling crafting). There are people who have been playing the game for a long period of time that find the idea of owning several hundred gold to be shocking, and a full suit of cloth armor is in the 600g range, even if you do all the work yourself. And that’s for a single character. If you’re talking about outfitting several characters, and/or having multiple stat sets for a given character so that they can perform different roles, then that balloons.

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

Nike.2631:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

except not everyone has been playing the game for the last 9 months? do you really think thats a reasonable expectation of grind/boredom for new/returning players looking for challenge?

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

better get going! we both no serious group is gonna take you on raids with full exotics, amirite?

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

except not everyone has been playing the game for the last 9 months? do you really think thats a reasonable expectation of grind/boredom for new/returning players looking for challenge?

If they’re looking “for a challenge” they can find somebody to carry them. If they’re wanting to be fully prepped the path is pretty plainly laid out. If I’m building a raid group naturally I’ll make allowances for skilled players who are making an effort to get caught up. But if actual experience shows they’re dragging us down they get benched for a while until they are caught up because its unfair to the other nine people. That’s how team activities work – the team is more important than your inability to perform for whatever reason.

This is like arguing “I don’t wanna use food.” Fine. Don’t. But do it somewhere else because frankly I don’t have this on farm mode yet and I expect the people on my teams to at least be trying to do their homework. Preparation is as much a part of raiding as scheduling.

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

except not everyone has been playing the game for the last 9 months? do you really think thats a reasonable expectation of grind/boredom for new/returning players looking for challenge?

If they’re looking “for a challenge” they can find somebody to carry them. If they’re wanting to be fully prepped the path is pretty plainly laid out. If I’m building a raid group naturally I’ll make allowances for skilled players who are making an effort to get caught up. But if actual experience shows they’re dragging us down they get benched for a while until they are caught up because its unfair to the other nine people. That’s how team activities work – the team is more important than your inability to perform for whatever reason.

This is like arguing “I don’t wanna use food.” Fine. Don’t. But do it somewhere else because frankly I don’t have this on farm mode yet and I expect the people on my teams to at least be trying to do their homework. Preparation is as much a part of raiding as scheduling.

Im not saying that you should take them, in fact im saying it would be everyone else carrying an undergeared persons weight.

Point is, yes, ascended is expected, and yes you will probably have to get it, or be seen as a negative.

So how fullfilling is it getting ascended in this game, especially if you like challenging content?
thats the problem they need to solve.
Ascended is boring and time gated to aquire. I got one set complete, and i never want to do it again. I dont think its reasonable that my friends suffer the same grinds to achieve it.

The solution?
Improve ascended aquisition through interesting gameplay and lower grind/hard time gates.

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

better get going! we both no serious group is gonna take you on raids with full exotics, amirite?

Like I said, I’m 2 pieces away and need one more weapon for a full set. I’ll be done by the 23rd no problem. And since I’m one of those freakish personality types that likes healing, I doubt I’ll have too much trouble getting into my guild’s core group if I exert myself just a little bit. And I’ve waited a long time for this game to have content where a off-healer would be welcome, so I probably will exert myself .

No serious group is not going to ask “how far along is your gear?” Skill will always be the larger consideration, but no one impresses the coach by showing up for practice with their shoelaces untied…

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

better get going! we both no serious group is gonna take you on raids with full exotics, amirite?

Like I said, I’m 2 pieces away and need one more weapon for a full set. I’ll be done by the 23rd no problem. And since I’m one of those freakish personality types that likes healing, I doubt I’ll have too much trouble getting into my guild’s core group if I exert myself just a little bit. And I’ve waited a long time for this game to have content where a off-healer would be welcome, so I probably will exert myself .

No serious group is not going to ask “how far along is your gear?” Skill will always be the larger consideration, but no one impresses the coach by showing up for practice with their shoelaces untied…

the coach doesnt ask if you are wearing your uniform, he expects it. Skill is the most important, but you still need to be this tall before they let you on the ride.

By making it entertaining/non grindy to actually obtain ascended they ensure a better game experience for people looking to do high level challenging content

phys.7689:

the coach doesnt ask if you are wearing your uniform, he expects it. Skill is the most important, but you still need to be this tall before they let you on the ride.

Depends on where you are. If its a rich school, sure. If its a take what you can get village you take what you can get. As a raid leader in other games I’d don’t expect every person to have apex gear (in no small part because in other game you usually have to raid to get that gear…) but it does factor in to who gets to go until such time and we have a body of experienced/geared players who can carry a percentage of less capable players. And if apex gear is achievable outside of the raid, the question will be asked: “why aren’t you fully prepped and do you need a hand getting there?”

Honestly the system they have proposed for raid locks is surprisingly gracious to ‘big picture’ raiders willing to volunteer their time to stiffen up the composition of secondary groups.

By making it entertaining/non grindy to actually obtain ascended they ensure a better game experience for people looking to do high level challenging content

Ya know… they tried that at launch. And it cost them so many players they ran screaming to the introduction of the ascended tier. No matter how you or I feel about it, the fact is a lot of people playing MMOs play for the accumulation of advantage over time and when a character is maxed out with apex gear in every slot… they’re DONE. They move on. In DROVES. The grind serves a very real purpose and getting rid of the grind defeats that purpose. Don’t expect them to go back to the halcyon days of GW2’s youth when they didn’t know any better.

Doam.8305:

My main isn’t a Necro but I feel sorry for Necros…

If people are expecting ascended then Necro’s will even be more neglected

Like some else said if it needs ascended then it matter more about what classes you bring. So Zerker Zerk(No idea about warrior elite zerker being a meta but I just like typing Zerker Zerk) ascended only no Necro. Which I’ve never understood because this groups state Warr/Guard Zerk only yet still type no Necro.

Because people listen to some math computer geek gamer with a fancy you tube channel(Fun with Flags anyone?) who told them, probably a couple of years ago, that a necro does this and that X% badder than class X and so has to be shunned, avoided and shamed on all levels instead of listenig to their heart, their experience(come on people, do you really want to tell me you can´t do AC with a necro in the party? Who needs a training wheel now?) and their feeling of time(would we be already there if we had not kicked that necro instead of waiting for class X?).

Astralporing.1957:

PopeUrban.2578:

In fact, since the release of ascended two years ago they have done nothing but make it easier and easier to acquire.

Quite the opposite. Each next group of introduced ascended required more and more effort and grind.
Just compare rings to armor – the second is soooo much easier[/sarcasm]

PopeUrban.2578:

There was once a time where the only way to get dragonite was from world bosses and the only way to get empy shards was from JP chests you know.

First, those were never a real problem, and second, it’s not actually true – empyreals for example were available from dungeons and wvw since day one.

PopeUrban.2578:

Couple days in SW and pretty much anybody has a full set of ascended

oh, please, stop exagerrating. Few days of SW will not get you even close to enough mats for ascended set, and to get enough gold you’d have to run the farm literallycouple of days.

PopeUrban.2578:

and there’s no telling what other acquisiton methods they may or may not have added to HoT.

If those hypothetical new acquisition methods change the situation that much to have a serious positive impact on difficulty of obtaining ascended, i may change my opinion, but so far we haven’t heard even a hint that anything like that is planned. Besides, based on past experience, any method with such a big impact would get nerfed into the ground within hours anyway.

“each new group” of ascended?

There haven’t been new groups since the last of the gear was released. They didn’t add new equipment slots. They finished adding the tier to the game with weapon and armor crafting and haven’t revisited the system since aside from adding new recipies which you don’t even need because you can now just craft the absolute cheapest piece and change the stats with miyani.

As I said, it’s far easier to obtain than it used to be.

I’m not exaggerating. go ahead and scroll up, read me other post. I went from 0-500 armorcrafting in a week, and built a full suit of ascended in a week playing ~6 hours a day during a vacation. On a more normal schedule you can do it in a month. That is not any kind of special effort. It’s just prioritizing a goal. I didn’t lay out exactly what I did, but it’s the proetty standard vinewraith farm intil you have a stack of keys, then run the chest train. And that was farming it. Should I have decided to persue it more casually it still would have amounted to a full set of BiS gear in a few months. It is not some lofty unattainable goal. It’s very easy to obtain gear. You just have to prioritize it like you actually want it, which means not spending your gold elsewhere. This is the same thing you’d do for any items you were trying to collect.

Yes, you’re right, you could get the shards from dungeons, I’d completely forgotten that method, sorry. Looks like it has actually remained even easier than I remembered.

It’s not that it’s unreasonably difficult to acquire. It’s that certain people find any level of effort unreasonable. They want full sets of ascended, legendary armor, and to not spend any of their stack of gold on it so they can keep saving up for whatever skin or mini or dye or whatever else they usually prioritize.

All you have to do is prioritize the gear, and it’s trivial to acquire at this point in the game compared to every other measurable goal in the game

Compare ascended to a mini collection, or lumi armor, or a legendary weapon, or a single fractal skin. One could argue “but ascended is manditory!”

No, it is not. It’s no more manditory than it ever was. You will probably want it for a very small and specific portion of endgame content, but if you’re not they type of person that could be bothered with it for L50 fractals I fail to see why raids are suddenly such a big draw.

Is it because they made content worth doing with decent rewards?

If you want legendary armor that is functionally identical to ascended armor should it not also follow that you’re willing to do what it takes to get it? You’re not going to just get it handed out during the raid either. Getting any new legendary from here on means doing stuff you might not want to do because they are all account bound

You can’t buy any new legendary, weapons included, by just farming gold and visiting the TP.

You don’t just have to raid for the precursor. To craft the legendary itself you are going to have to do WvW, and sPvP, and go through a whole lot of stuff that probably isn’t your preferred content because that is how legendaries are made

Nike.2631:

By making it entertaining/non grindy to actually obtain ascended they ensure a better game experience for people looking to do high level challenging content

Ya know… they tried that at launch. And it cost them so many players they ran screaming to the introduction of the ascended tier. No matter how you or I feel about it, the fact is a lot of people playing MMOs play for the accumulation of advantage over time and when a character is maxed out with apex gear in every slot… they’re DONE. They move on. In DROVES. The grind serves a very real purpose and getting rid of the grind defeats that purpose. Don’t expect them to go back to the halcyon days of GW2’s youth when they didn’t know any better.

Anet could have figured out another solution that wouldn’t have impacted gameplay in such a way. That’s the worst thing about this mess. Ascended gear has now changed everything about the game and now they can’t go back when they could have figured out another route to make the game have horizontal progression and NOT impact the gameplay. masteries is a step in the right direction but i don’t think it’s enough. They have the creativity to makesomething that won’t exclude the masses while appeasing those who need that desire. Not that it’s easy to come up with a solution, but they could have tried something without resorting to gear grind that ultimately hurts the game and impacts the future of the game.

And now, with full legendary gear, the impact will be WORSE.

Relying on a tight enrage timer for ‘difficulty’ is a bastion of incompetence. It really doesn’t let the game engine shine and it only reinforces all the previous complaints about group content.

@Astralporing: You could be right that they’ve tuned for specific group makeup + specific expected builds + expected player skill level + encounter knowledge + a 2-5% gear benefit, but if they have they’ve overtuned and they’re ending up with raid content almost nobody will do.

As a more likely alternative, the players couldn’t learn the encounter nearly as well as they thought they could in 1 day’s worth of play.

PopeUrban.2578:

If you want legendary armor that is functionally identical to ascended armor should it not also follow that you’re willing to do what it takes to get it? You’re not going to just get it handed out during the raid either. Getting any new legendary from here on means doing stuff you might not want to do because they are all account bound

It is statistically identical, not functionally identical. Ascended is missing the central component of the function of legendary armor, adaption.
Basically, if you have a zerk ascended Armor, you have a fast car. If you have legendary armor, you´re sitting in a transformer or clan omnimech.

Torolan.5816:

PopeUrban.2578:

If you want legendary armor that is functionally identical to ascended armor should it not also follow that you’re willing to do what it takes to get it? You’re not going to just get it handed out during the raid either. Getting any new legendary from here on means doing stuff you might not want to do because they are all account bound

It is statistically identical, not functionally identical. Ascended is missing the central component of the function of legendary armor, adaption.
Basically, if you have a zerk ascended Armor, you have a fast car. If you have legendary armor, you´re sitting in a transformer or clan omnimech.

Except for the part where you can’t transform in the middle of a fight, so the ability to transform isn’t at all useful in a practical sense, just in an economic one.

Content does not change in the middle of the fight either, so that it does not change in combat is rather irrelevant in my opinion. But you are right in a certain way, it is much more like the omnimech instead of the transformer then.

You can change your zerk gear into soldier or celestial within a few minutes and join where you want with whatever you want in the confines of your armor type and available classes. If that is not a vast advantage and a comfort funtion all in once, I don´t know what comfort and versatility are.

castlemanic.3198:

Anet could have figured out another solution that wouldn’t have impacted gameplay in such a way. That’s the worst thing about this mess. Ascended gear has now changed everything about the game and now they can’t go back when they could have figured out another route to make the game have horizontal progression and NOT impact the gameplay.

Ah yes, Ascended gear completely changed the, what, ~3 months the game was out while Ascended tier didn’t exist? You guys do know that the Ascended tier was released in like November after the game launched in August, right?

Some of you act like the game was out for years before they added this controversial tier. Sure it started with trinkets, but armor and weapons was the obvious next step.

As far as I’m concerned, they were still within a 90-day grace period to add things like this and not have it ruin the game. Clearly many disagree.

PopeUrban.2578:

Except for the part where you can’t transform in the middle of a fight, so the ability to transform isn’t at all useful in a practical sense, just in an economic one.

actually it’s useful in both a practical and economical sense. If raids are to be successful, the mechanics of each raid should differ from another raid in most parts, which means not just having a single type of gear or two, but several types of gear for the overall raiding structure. Legendaries also don’t simply accomodate raids but also every other aspect of gameplay aside from spvp, even in WvW. There’s a practical sense in being able to change the stats of your gear on the fly before any given encounter which is a massive advantage over not only those in ascended gear, but over anyone in less than ascended as well. the simple fact is that legendaries are very economically useful, but also practically useful in that there’s no need to carry a dozen armour types for every conceivable use and the hassle of sorting through those dozen armour sets to find the one useful for any given encounter, even if someone had acquired the ascended gear for free and no effort. being able to adapt and adjust to a more extreme sense than anyone with 2 or 3 sets of gear is simply useful and in a fashion lets players with legendaries truly play any way they wish, a selling point for GW2.

this needs to change. Legendaries should be more easily acquired as well as ascended armour too, or grant the ability to change stats with ascended gear and have legendaries be the ultimate cosmetic journey with lots of particle effects or some OTHER effect than changing stats.

Torolan.5816:

Content does not change in the middle of the fight either, so that it does not change in combat is rather irrelevant in my opinion. But you are right in a certain way, it is much more like the omnimech instead of the transformer then.

You can change your zerk gear into soldier or celestial within a few minutes and join where you want with whatever you want in the confines of your armor type and available classes. If that is not a vast advantage and a comfort funtion all in once, I don´t know what comfort and versatility are.

That’s kind of my point though. Comfort and verastility are not advantage in a mechanical sense. In fact, you have more versatility toting around multiple sets of ascended (and players have the bag space to do that) due to the way runes and sigils work in the first place.

One of every set of ascended, with appropriate rune and sigil sets for the build is actually far more versatile than a single set of legendaries, and have the exact same set of limitations. You can only swap them out out of combat.

The primary difference is purely cosmetic.

If anet starts adding stat creep to gear, I’ll be right there crying fould with everyone else. I felt ascended was a good addition as at the time it was being introduced acquiring “The last gear you’ll ever need” was just trivial, even by GW1 standards. Around release I was toting around at least two sets of exotics, including one of every weapon my class could use, within days of hitting 80.

Conversely, finishing one set of armor in GW1, with the superior vigor and all the other runes I needed for a given build was actually much closer to the time frame required for ascended. It was similarly only marginally more effective than using the much cheaper major runes.

Ascended feels like an accomplishment, exotics feel like an expectation. Adding more stat tiers to the game would invalidate the accomplishment of ascended, but the existance of ascended never really invalidated the accomplishment of exotics because exotics were always trivial to acquire.

It felt more appropriate in the new design. Max level in GW1 was “training mode” and max level in GW2 was a more progression focused achievement. It seemed only appropriate to make that last little bit of stats similarly more progression focused, and I applaud anet for going to the massive effort of sticking to their guns and taking the much more expensive and work intensive route of designing the mastery system for HoT than just adding another tier of stat gear to the game.

If that’s not an indication that they’re serious about sticking to the promise of ascended being permanent BiS I don’t know what is. Do you have any idea how much less work it would have been to just add 10 more character and gear levels?

Legendaries build on that idea of accomplishment without invalidating the ascended stuff, and further they don’t even really do anything but make you look different and free up some bag space. It’s such a small difference that it’s completely okay to just ignore. I’ve ignored legendary weapons for years and haven’t really felt at all disenfranchised by the fact those that were willing to pursue them had the option to do so.

We all knew it would only be a matter of time before legendary armor would be a thing, and we knew anet wasn’t happy with the idea that legendaries were tradable. They always intended legendaries to be these big things you really had to work for and play the entire game for. This is just an extension of that, building upon what they learned from the old precursor model. People pretty much universally said “why isn’t this tied to some super-hard content somehow so it feels, you know, legendary?”

Now it is. The first step of your legendary armor is completing some pretty gnarly content. Past that you get to farm for mats, go do a much of WvW and PvP stuff, probably have to max out a bunch of masteries, and generally play everything in the game. Raids replace the dungeon requirements of weapon legendaries, which were a spotty and inconsistent system where some legendaries required dungeon completions and some did not.

Would people have been less upset if the precursors were crafted but one of the final components was raid specific? Who knows?

Will they add a different set of legendary armor that doesn’t require instances just as some of the current legendary weapons don’t require instances? Who knows?

Draknar.5748:

Ah yes, Ascended gear completely changed the, what, ~3 months the game was out while Ascended tier didn’t exist? You guys do know that the Ascended tier was released in like November after the game launched in August, right?

Some of you act like the game was out for years before they added this controversial tier. Sure it started with trinkets, but armor and weapons was the obvious next step.

As far as I’m concerned, they were still within a 90-day grace period to add things like this and not have it ruin the game. Clearly many disagree.

As many have a right to, because ascended should never have been introduced. The game was sold on the basis that you can attain max level stats in any game mode you played. After three months, not even a year, they introduced ascended items because, what, people didn’t like the very non-verticle progression the game was friggin sold on?

Like I said, the staff at Anet are creative and they could have figured out another solution instead of gear treadmill behaviour, a pattern which they’re falling into again with the introduction of legendary armour and backpacks. Unless ascended and legendary gear are made more obtainable, players will be excluded from content by other players, specifically raids for the moment but it could extend to any other content as well.

different raid levels and different methods of obtaining legendary and ascended gear, a FULL set of both, can satisfy the largest portion of the playerbase, and throw in highest level unique skins for the hardest tier of raiding for those who aren’t satisfied. titles, achievements, there are so many things that could be given to high tier raiders that don’t impact the state of the game, and methods of introducing content for everyone without excluding any crowd. At the end of the day, the ONLY people who can get really mad are the ones who are so entitled, they believe that no one else should ever have access to legendaries other than the elite, a sentiment that is inherently exclusive with no way to negotiate.

There is already proof of elitism and elitist behaviour, both within the game and within these forums too, and Arenanet is doing nothing to curb it, they’re only throwing more fuel on the fire instead of going after the firestarters. Elitist jerks will never be happy, so there’s no need to cater to them. Hard-core players however DO deserve love, and different levels of difficulty for all types of instanced content can serve to give hard-core players the challenge that they desire while more casual or less skilled players still have the option to enjoy all the content and have no gear barred from them either.

There are SOLUTIONS to this problem. it’s not unsolvable. But arenanet does not seem to wish to persue those options and that’s the most disappointing and infurating thing of all.

I don´t know about you PopeUrban, but i would have been much less kittened if the message sent from Anet would have been:
“Hm, ok, you can have the legendary armor. But you at least need to do any one part of the raid successfully once for the piece of legend found there”
instead of:
“Hm, ok, you can have the legendary armor. But we hide everything about it behind multiple instances you have to suffer through until you get your legendary armor. If you´re interested in raiding or not is of no consequence for us.”

Although a toad, I would have swallowed option A with much less groaning and moaning than option B as that not only offers me just one way of playing for a long time if I want the content, but is nothing less that a hardcore grind for me.

Torolan.5816:

I don´t know about you PopeUrban, but i would have been much less kittened if the message sent from Anet would have been:
“Hm, ok, you can have the legendary armor. But you at least need to do any one part of the raid successfully once for the piece of legend found there”
instead of:
“Hm, ok, you can have the legendary armor. But we hide everything about it behind multiple instances you have to suffer through until you get your legendary armor. If you´re interested in raiding or not is of no consequence for us.”

Although a toad, I would have swallowed option A with much less groaning and moaning than option B as that not only offers me just one way of playing for a long time if I want the content, but is nothing less that a hardcore grind for me.

I think the general idea was that a full set of armor is 6 pieces, and each precursor denotes a separate piece of content. This is a bit different than weapons, since you can’t use 1/6 of a weapon, and they said the material requirements for a full set of armor are much closer to a single weapon than six weapons.

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

But would u reather Isolate more ppl by saying “zerker 80s only raid” doing this only keeps the minorities left in the dark making it unfriendly. But the thing about the ascended armor does need to be fixed with more of the fractal system in play, so the difficulty can be changed depending on what the group wants lowest it should be is exotic or half exotic half rare. they also need to figure out how to make these players more relivent because there isnt a threat system in the game. there are alot of things that need to be fixed an combed out . just need to keep making more threads about the problems that u see about the raid.

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

To kill a trash miniboss.

In an untested raid.

That may be significantly overhauled due to the fact people actually zerked it in BWE-supplied exotics

delicious.

But I guess this will last for about 3 weeks till difficulty will be dropped to casual level.

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

Do you know what the gear set combos were for the groups that completed it?

Like I said they need to Fix an combed out the problems that the raid has. an no i didnt do the raid i see that there is a timer which ppl r trying to address right now in other forums by coming up with a better ways of doing the raid. there trying to give the devs better ideas other then the timer. But the thing is the Meta needs to be broken seeing the same Old thing for 3 years is kinda sad. ive went in other threads addressing that nercos an rangers get kicked out of partys because they cant pull the dps that ppl want =/.

Things need to change 3 years is enough for the old meta, it needs to be friends with other playstyles now.

the Only way they can make ascended required for raids is if they use something like AR that can only be outfitted on Ascended gear. The stat differences between Exotic and Ascended is not game breaking enough to be required for raids, unless there is some mechanic behind it.

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

They never said you would need Ascended armor for it. “Challenging content” has nothing to do with stats, the Lion’s Arch JP is challenging, you can do it at level 1.

Balancing content around being able to deal X amount of damage per minute is not “challenging,” that is just a gear-check. Challenge is in actual gameplay, and could be done even if the content required no more than blues and greens for gearing.

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

Do you know what the gear set combos were for the groups that completed it?

Yes. To quote one of the posts:

“Group comp, 4 Condi Engi (1 tankier hybrid, which was me), 3 Revenants, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Warrior.
Everyone was in Berserker, except the Condi Engis of course. I don’t think the Berserker meta is quite over with yet.”

There are some less detailed comments on reddit about the other groups, but they all suggest they were running similar setups (one hybrid tank, few condis, rest zerk dps).
Also, it seems that Revs were a good replacement for eles. Which doesn’t sound too well for eles, by the way.

Ohoni.6057:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

They never said you would need Ascended armor for it. “Challenging content” has nothing to do with stats, the Lion’s Arch JP is challenging, you can do it at level 1.

Balancing content around being able to deal X amount of damage per minute is not “challenging,” that is just a gear-check. Challenge is in actual gameplay, and could be done even if the content required no more than blues and greens for gearing.

This post is ridiculous, comparing challenging group content to JPs and not thinking “dealing lots of damage means reducing defensive stats cannot mean more challenge” is just weird…

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

Do you know what the gear set combos were for the groups that completed it?

Yes. To quote one of the posts:

“Group comp, 4 Condi Engi (1 tankier hybrid, which was me), 3 Revenants, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Warrior.
Everyone was in Berserker, except the Condi Engis of course. I don’t think the Berserker meta is quite over with yet.”

Which implies they flubbed their encounter design, as that’s against their stated goals.

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

As i mentioned in this post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raids-Required-Ascended/page/2#post5580810 people should not think about ascendant armor at all. It is a ~0.5% difference in damage and ~1% difference in defence. But ascendant trinkets and weapon really required. Numbers and nothing more.

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

As i said, it was within 15% (for the time the fight took +15% means around 60 seconds more). And this is roughly the difference of dps in zerker sets (which most of the group was running). Which means that the group, had they been wearing exotics, might have finished with few seconds to spare, or they might have been few seconds too short.

So yeah, the dev note was really fun, but likely not in the way you think.

Astralporing.1957:

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

As i said, it was within 15% (for the time the fight took +15% means around 60 seconds more). And this is roughly the difference of dps in zerker sets (which most of the group was running). Which means that the group, had they been wearing exotics, might have finished with few seconds to spare, or they might have been few seconds too short.

So yeah, the dev note was really fun, but likely not in the way you think.

They seemed to waste a lot of time (relatively) after they got it to 50% and beat two of the 3 lesser bosses. Unless its defense went up that last 50%, they didn’t perform as well as the first half. Now, I didn’t look into great detail to see exactly what the cause was for that second half but it cost them at least a minute or so.

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

As i said, it was within 15% (for the time the fight took +15% means around 60 seconds more). And this is roughly the difference of dps in zerker sets (which most of the group was running). Which means that the group, had they been wearing exotics, might have finished with few seconds to spare, or they might have been few seconds too short.

So yeah, the dev note was really fun, but likely not in the way you think.

They seemed to waste a lot of time (relatively) after they got it to 50% and beat two of the 3 lesser bosses. Unless its defense went up that last 50%, they didn’t perform as well as the first half. Now, I didn’t look into great detail to see exactly what the cause was for that second half but it cost them at least a minute or so.

From what i understand, there are new mechanics added at two points in the fight. Might be it – though i don’t remember the details.

Nvm, found it:

“There are 2 Intermission Phases where the Raid splits up and kills the 3 Guardians.
At Phase 2 you have 2 new Mechanics. The first one is a Clusterkitten of AOEs but the Bosses Breakbar gets enabled and you need to kill this Breakbar. The other Mechanic is that one third of the Floor start to shine and you don’t want to be there and you need to Position your entire Raid far away from the shiny Floor ( which also switches so you have to move ) just to make sure that the Lighting doesn’t Spawn in the Shiny Field.
Phase 3: 2/3 of the Field is shiny.”

That might account for at least some of the delay, i guess (though maybe not).

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

As i said, it was within 15% (for the time the fight took +15% means around 60 seconds more). And this is roughly the difference of dps in zerker sets (which most of the group was running). Which means that the group, had they been wearing exotics, might have finished with few seconds to spare, or they might have been few seconds too short.

So yeah, the dev note was really fun, but likely not in the way you think.

They seemed to waste a lot of time (relatively) after they got it to 50% and beat two of the 3 lesser bosses. Unless its defense went up that last 50%, they didn’t perform as well as the first half. Now, I didn’t look into great detail to see exactly what the cause was for that second half but it cost them at least a minute or so.

From what i understand, there are new mechanics added at two points in the fight. Might be it – though i don’t remember the details.

Nvm, found it:

“There are 2 Intermission Phases where the Raid splits up and kills the 3 Guardians.
At Phase 2 you have 2 new Mechanics. The first one is a Clusterkitten of AOEs but the Bosses Breakbar gets enabled and you need to kill this Breakbar. The other Mechanic is that one third of the Floor start to shine and you don’t want to be there and you need to Position your entire Raid far away from the shiny Floor ( which also switches so you have to move ) just to make sure that the Lighting doesn’t Spawn in the Shiny Field.
Phase 3: 2/3 of the Field is shiny.”

That might account for at least some of the delay, i guess (though maybe not).

Yeah. I guess we’ll have to wait until after they officially enable the raid or if they give us a full beta weekend to test it which is becoming less likely the closer to launch we get.

This post is ridiculous, comparing challenging group content to JPs and not thinking “dealing lots of damage means reducing defensive stats cannot mean more challenge” is just weird…

Challenge has zero to do with stats. An enemy that has 1000 HP and deals 50 damage per hit is no more challenging than one that has 100HP and deals 5 damage per hit, so long as you can just slap on armor that mitigates ten times as much damage and weapons that deal ten times as much. Just upping stats does nothing to make a scenario more challenging. Challenge comes from tactics, figuring out how to avoid their attacks and how to bypass their defenses.

Really the best way for them to balance a “challenging encounter” in GW2 would be to design it so that all damage was based purely on attack coefficient (ie the base damage it does regardless of statting), so that someone in white armor would be dealing exactly as much damage as someone in Ascended, and it all comes down to player skill.