Guild Wars 2

Okay, so I’ve spent a lot of time recently reading through threads about ascended gear and the gear treadmill and so on and so forth, and there are a lot of people happy about it and a lot of other people unhappy about it, for a variety of reasons. Then there’s another group pointing out that at some point during the development it was stated that expansions were likely to come with a raise to the level cap, which would pretty much have to come with a new tier of gear to match.

I started feeling a bit depressed, as I’ve just finished crafting my first set of exotic armor, and the thought of all that effort and money being rendered obsolete at some point, even months down the road, was really galling. Because it doesn’t matter how small the jump, more is more.

But I started thinking, and I remembered thinking the other day about how when Ascended weapons come out people with legendary weapons will get a free ride, since the legendary weapons are supposed to get a bump up to whatever is the highest tier. (A bump they kind of deserve given the effort put into one, in theory)

So I hit upon an idea.

Legendary Armor.

Now, there have been a number of people asking for/suggesting the addition of Legendary Armor, but what they’re usually asking for is really just flashy armor skins, and some of them would prefer these cost far far more than legendary weapons so very few people will have it so they can get it and lord it over the unwashed masses (crazy, but some people are only interested in something if it makes them somehow better than everyone else).
That’s not what I’m suggesting (though flashy looks don’t hurt, except to make whatever it is a lot more expensive).

I was thinking, what if I could put in a bit more effort than getting an exotic to get something that would future proof my character against new tiers of gear. Put in the effort now to get a set of armor that will get bumped up when that next tier hits.

I figure there could a couple different versions (not counting stat combinations), this would allow for pretty expensive really flashy ones, and some more basic ones for those of us who just don’t want to deal with the treadmill. And since right now they’d have the same stats as exotic they’d be an optional thing, people who like/are addicted to that gear treadmill can ignore it and grind away happily when the time comes, but those of us who’d prefer something more akin to GW1 where we got our max armor and that was that don’t have to deal with it.
Having the more basic set for those of us, like me, who just want the future proofing; and the more expensive set for those who like having the super expensive super flashy stuff means it’s win win win.

Now, when I said the basic set would cost a bit more than exotic, I meant that literally, the basic set shouldn’t be super expensive (like a legendary weapon), leave that for the really flashy set. I’d like to be able to actually afford this, preferably on more than one toon.

How would crafting this work?
Well the biggest hurdle is that armor has six pieces whereas a weapon is a single unit, so the best way to do it would be to craft it like you craft a box of armor now, except you’d craft something like a “Chest of Legendary Berserker Armor” for the basic set and “Ancient Chest of Legendary Berserker Armor” for the much more expensive flashy stuff.

I can’t stress this enough, the lower end stuff would need to be far more obtainable than the flashy stuff, like the difference between crafting a basic exotic sword and crafting Infinite Light kind of difference okay? The whole point of it is so I can avoid the gear treadmill, if it’s too expensive it’ll just make having to do the gear treadmill that much worse, knowing the option is there but out of reach.

Can’t help but wonder if they really meant “new tier” or just meant higher leveled armours for the same tiers we have now.

What they call it is largely beside the point though. I would assume that with a level increase (say to 100 just for examples sake), we’d likely see whites, blues, greens, rares, and exotics all the way up.
It wouldn’t have to have a special name like Ascended, but just the fact that lvl100 gear existed would render my lvl80 stuff (which up till this point I believed would be the max gear I’d have to get) as obsolete, thus requiring me to hop back on the gear grind. So whether they call it a new tier or extend the existing tiers it’s the same problem either way.

What I propose is a way for people like me, who vastly preferred GW1’s way of being able to get a set or two of max armor and not have to worry about it becoming sub-optimal or obsolete, to obtain armor that would, like the legendary weapons, get automatically bumped up to whatever new tier/stat level of gear is added.

It would come with the complication of course that if a new tier was released I’d find myself with lvl100 armor I can’t wear (still being lvl80), but it wouldn’t be too hard to grab a set of lvl80 greens to use while I leveled my character up to whatever the new cap was (or even use a set of exotics already crafted).

So, you want your current exotic armour to be scaled up to level X (the new high level) and then you can equip it when you reach level X?

Fantastic idea, love it!

No offence, but how lazy can people get? Ascended armor isn’t even out yet and people are trying to find a easy way to obtain it. Yes, ascended gear will be better then exotics, but given the fact that you can obtain a full set of exotics in a matter of 5-10 mins, does it really matter? Save up all your karma from 1-80 if you do most of your dailies and montly then you’ve got enough for 80 exotic armor, farm a dungeon for 3-4 days and you’ve got yourself exotic armor. People act as if it takes months on end to get exotics so when they’re finally as not BiS people will be like “OMG I SPENT SO MUCH TIME GETTING EXOTICS AND NOW THEY’RE USLESS”… It has been said that ascended gear will be available to get from every aspect of the game in the future when more is released. Basically what you’re saying is, even though you can get the gear by simply playing the game you enjoy, you’d rather have it easy.

If anet released these “legendary” armors that scaled in stat level with ascended, do you not think you’d have to farm like hell for them anyway? so what is the difference between going out of your way now to farm a certain set of gear, or wait untill they’re actually released and “farm” the ascended gear while playing the game.

All this suggestion is really asking for is “Give me a gear treadmill now instead of later”. Either way it will be a gear treadmill, the fact that they will scale as new stats come out makes them BiS, therefore in the long run adding these into the game now is still a gear treadmill. It works for legendary weapons because these either cost you 1k+ gold or a long time farming, therefore they should be scaled up, but giving you these “basic version” isn’t the same at all. The way you’re saying it, they might aswell make exotics harder to get and then make them scale, then people would moan “oh exotics are too hard stop forcing us to farm for them”.

@EliteZ What he is saying I believe, is based on the assumption that ANet is going to (for whatever reason) start thinking that the ascended tier isn’t enough and keep going vertical (which we all, including ANet, hope isn’t truth at all). If that where the case, your one time “gear treadmill now instead of later” would prevent you from having to upgrade your armor every single time they added a new tier. That’s logical. Now, at the same time ANet has already stated that they don’t plan for any more vertical escalation after Ascended gear, which sort of moot-points the entire thing anyways.

I don’t think they will raise the level cap, at least not for a very long time, because there is no reason too. You gain skill points every “level” after 80, so if they add more skills you can still get them. They can keep adding more and more level 80 gear, and still have it look different (adding to the horizontal scale) that makes for something for you to strive for. Adding a higher level cap would require way too much effort for ANet to rebalance and fix things (all those legendaries/ascended would be obsolete as level 80 item < level 100 item), and they know they have better things to do with their time.

As it stands, I’m one of the people he talked about that would love to see some Legendary SKINS on armor. I already made a post about this ages ago and it died off rather fast. I would specifically love to see armor made out of boss/champion creatures, allowing you to show off the fact that “Hey, I’ve killed Jormags champion so many times, i made a suit out of him :P” adding another reward to something people already do quite a lot (granted, i’d rather see these be normal crafted rather than mystic forge crafted. Give me a reason to use my armor smith skill I maxed out again. Let me pick the Insignia to dictate my stats, and then require me to put in a bunch of dragon-parts and normal max tier armor mats to make something, so I feel like I am a legendary smith on top of being this supposed “Hero of the world”).