Guild Wars 2

So, with the release of HOT and the focus on fractals as the primary 5 man cooperative content in GW2 now is surely a really good time to overhaul the rather patchwork and often confusing (especially for new players) approach to infusions, while at the same time implementing a sensible and useful level 500 jewellery crafting system.

These two birds can be got with one stone by doing something along the lines of the following suggestion.

Primarily, remove the defensive/offensive/utility infusion slot from the game completely.
On weapons, armour and un-infused ascended accessories replace it with an agony infusion slot (the +1 to +16 ones).
On infused ascended accessories replace it with an inbuilt +5 AR.
On all ascended accessories remove the inbuilt stat bonuses and replace those with a normal gem/jewel/universal slot (the same as how exotic and lower accessories work).

It is very important that this be done in such a way as to not penalize players for investing heavily in these slots by returning any mats used (the many T6 mats for those +5 power/precision etc infusions being the most important).
Make those of these items that are desirable to keep in the game (utility infusions, WvW infusions) into ascended universal upgrades (with a 1 per character restriction, ala ascended items in general, and minus any AR).

There are many advantages to doing this. Firstly you greatly streamline the AR system, and completely separate it from item stats. This makes it a lot easier for players to understand, and separately pursue both AR and max stats on their gear without having to invest in either one if they dont want to. It also creates more consistency across all ascended gear, and more consistency across all accessories.

Secondly by replacing those AR slots with a normal upgrade slot as seen on exotic and lower accessories you create a space for crafted ascended jewellery items.
T6 precious metal (electrum?) created from lower tier precious metals (silver, gold, platinum etc),
T6 gems, created from lower tier gems,
T6 jewels created from T6 gems and T6 precious metal
T6 universal upgrades – any infusions converted to upgrades (utility infusions) as well as T6 versions of normal universal upgrades (seals, medallions etc) since those are currently useless and unused so this could be a good way to bring them back.

Since ascended accessories themselves are all named and unique and have many methods of acquisition already it doesn’t seem advisable to also make them craft-able, so by doing things this way you have more than enough items for grandmaster jewellers crafting without requiring that.

Its pretty clear that the initial implementation of AR was rushed, and the last revamp (which added the Agony resistance slot and the +1 to +16 AR infusions) is a vastly superior one that was introduced to help fix it. Now that we have had the new system system in place for a while now there is no good reason to keep the old one and as you can see essentially replacing the defensive/offensive/utility infusion slots with ascended jewellery slots would provide benefits all round.

Thank you for taking the time to read this feedback, hopefully it was of use to you and I wish you the best for the Heart of Thorns release, and that it be as successful as your hard work deserves.

I thinkl the whole Infusion System should get completely redesigned, the whole System as it stands right now is nothing by the most terrible grind I have ever seen and that for just an item, that is only relevent for 1 single place in the whole game, just so that you are able to survive the highest levels without havign to fear to get killed in seconds by a condition, that exists only in 1 single place of the game.
With increasing the Fractal levels, these +16 infusions become then more and more mandatory to be able to survive the highest levels..

It takes ages to create a +16 infusion under the current system and it costs WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY TOOOO MUCH to create them due to the ridiculous current total BS grind thats behind the creation formular that makes it each time you upgrade your infusions by +1 double as hard to get the next upgrade.

Upgrading your Infusions must become alot easier. Seriously, over 1000 Gold for just a +16 Infusion (and you need more of that for a complete Equipment Set, +16 is currently Max an infusion can have) is just absolutely INSANE.
For a complete set, if you’d buy them all you’d had to have like way over 8000 Gold!!!
Thats like only 1% of the whole community, that is so extreme rich, that they can fork out easily so much gold if they wanted

Simply said, the Infusion System must become alot more accessible for the broad player community, so that more players can also have at all a chance to reach the highest ranks of the Fractals.
The Effectivity of Infusions should also get increased, so that you need lesser AR to reach higher Levels.

Current max AR is 70 from ordinary Slots + 16 from 3 Agony Slot Accessoires = +48.
So the highest AR you could have currently is 118 if you have bought 316 Infusions already and a equipment set of your armor and your weapons fully with infusions slotted
With AR118 thats not even enough to be able to survive up to Fractal Level 100!!
SO anet woudl have to enable more Agony Slots to the other accessoures, and the Equipment, so that we can put in everywhere +16 infusions, making the infusions then extra ordinary super grindy surpreme then, if you are required to get +16 ifnusions for all items!!, whats then again way more than just 8000 gold … under the current system, or you can play instead fractals for your whole life, until you earned enough infusiuons to craft yourselv all the stuff >.>

They should completely remove the old system from the game, put for some limited time into the game a reward nocs, that lets you trade in infusions for gold/rewards and be good for the old crappy system then

One of my pet peeves with Ascended is the lack of a jewelry upgrade slot. I do however not mind the Defensive, Offensive and Utility slots for Infusions. I’ve invested heavy into gaining just the right stats, and as such, made several Omni-Infusions, far more expensive that the simple +5 stat +5 AR infusions (which are still valuable mind you) that I’ve populated other slots with. I don’t mind that it is a Gold sink, because the game needs some sort of sink to float money into. This is a way to “gate” progression as well, and gives you something to work towards.

All I want is Lv.80 upgrade slots added to the jewelry, especially when they’ve added such things as the Poly-luminescent Undulating Refractor (Black)—something you are denied from using on your Ascended trinkets. Boo, I say, boo!

So Orphael, did you notice the part of my suggestion where essentially every ascended item would get an agony infusion slot? Did you make an effort to understand what the suggestions actually are?

To be honest with you, you are talking only of balance and cost issues, which are easily resolved through adjusting values (eg making each run of FOTM drop more infusions, or drop higher infusions, thus lowering the price). A very simple problem to fix.

The topic here is how to make the infusion system simpler and more coherent while also implementing Grandmaster Jewellery crafting so please try to keep your comments relevant to that particular concept, and be sure to read more than just the word infusions, thanks.

Absconditus, you are right in that defensive/offensive/utility slots make a good gold sink, but they cause a huge amount of clutter to an infusion system that is very muddled in purpose. Are you adding infusions to increase AR or get those extra stats, or increase magic find or all of the above? Why are there two types of infusion slots and 4 categories of infusions?

It could all be much simpler and coherent – Infusions for AR, other upgrades for stats. All equipment from all tiers has the same upgrades, ascended also gets infusions.

And frankly, gold sinks are very easy to make, losing this as one would be no great hardship.

about the long overdue jeweler 500, Jeweler has nothign to do at all with infusions.

I think it would be alot better, if Anet just adds a complete new Crafting Job, that should be responsible for various different things:

Call it “The Scientist”

Scientiest would craft then stuff like: Infusions, Recipes, Tonics, Sigils, Runes, Inscriptions, Insignias.

Jeweler 500 should be used to modify Upgrades like Gemstones, Runes, Sigils then from Exotic to the new Ascended Versions, which are then accountbound unlockable versions which you can use whenever you like and removing ascended upgrades from equipment doesn’t mean then anymore, that you lose the removed upgrades.
Thats essentially needed now for Legendary Armors where you need to be able to remove constantly also your rune sets when you are able to constantly swap out of combat your stats, one should be able to swap so easiyl also like in PVp also all the upgrades.

Something that I see is possible only with Jeweler 500 and turning exotic upgrades into perma account unlockable accountbound versions, turnign finally the upgrade system more back to how GW1 was, where you unlocked your upgrades and all that stuff with Balthazar Points, where you hand#t to fear, that you lose anythign ,when you removed something from your equipment….

So I think we will see finally Jeweler 500 with HoT, with Legendary armors finding into GW2, now is the best time for it to get fionally implemented, together with Chef 500.
But for Infusions, I see it better solvedc via a new Crafting Job – the scientist

Yes jeweler has nothing to do with infusions, but if a 500 jeweller crafts ascended tier gems and jewels where do those get put while ascended accessories have no normal upgrade slot?

Seriously, read the first post carefully, it explains the premise. If you want to talk about your ideas for new crafting professions can you please make another thread for it? Id rather this one be about what I actually wrote in the original post.

Orpheal.8263:

Upgrading your Infusions must become alot easier. Seriously, over 1000 Gold for just a +16 Infusion (and you need more of that for a complete Equipment Set, +16 is currently Max an infusion can have) is just absolutely INSANE.

Technically, +16 is not the max possible, it’s just the highest that was made so far, am i wrong? Still, i agree that the cost for better ar infusions is way too high. And with 51-100 fractal levels coming, there will be a need for those higher level infusions.

I guess one solution would be for higher level infusions dropping in higher fractal levels (as it was supposed to be originally). Just +2 infusions dropping instead of +1 in (for example) 20 + fractals would cut the cost of infusions in half. If we could get +3 or +4 ones the reduction would end up quite significant.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_Infusion

Maximum lists only to +16, but you are right, technicalyl this stupid system is unendlessly expandable. However, due to the official wiki listing only to +16 makes many believe that +16 is the Max Limit)

However, I stay at the opinion, that crafting these infusions must become significantly cheaper… improving the infusion rewards would be already a very good beginning