Full-glass thieves benefit the most from ascended armor of any class, as their hp pool is very small, their healing skills are generally pathetic, and they lack invulnerability skills making damage mitigation a far greater priority than for most other classes. The relative importance of the defense increase to a warrior is much lower as they already have a lot (and an OP healing signet), and the relative importance of it to an elementalist is much lower as they have plenty of blocks/invulns/heals to throw around.
Before you embark on ascended crafting though, I would like to caution that the effect gains to be had are very minimal, and markedly inferior to the stat gains from using cheap food (5 silver or less) or cheap utilities (2-3 copper priced potions for type-classified mobs, 8 copper-priced Skale venom for everything else under the sun). Never use ascended unless you’re already using consumables, or you may find you’re spending literally thousands of times more for less than half the effect. Or as the case may be, making less profit – the additional XP offered by the use of consumables may more than pay for themselves from the increased skill point acquisition rate.
Within the armor types, the chestpiece and leggings give the most effect for investment. The stat gains to be had by upgrading the other 4 pieces are in the region of 4 stat points, even though they still require at least 4 damasks each – 3 for the insignia and 1 for the equipment itself in non-light classes.
I’d kit your characters out in asc chestpieces and leggings first before adding gloves/boots/helms/shoulders later on, instead of making full BiS one character at a time.
