Guild Wars 2

If you want to compete in a PvP mode of any game one of your main concerns is balance. Although skill balance depends on builds, skill lvl and situation, stat balance does not. By that I do not mean the basic stats of different classes or the problem of balancing condition vs direct damage; but the difference between equipment tiers, in this case exotic vs ascended.

An even playing field is one of the basic principles of competitive games. As Anet forces WvW-Players to acquire PvE-Characters and Equipment there already needs to be some work done before you can try to compete on high levels. The smaller the skill gap between players and the overall player numbers involved in a fight get, the more will the outcome rely on builds and stats.
The need to grind out that equipment tier to stay competitive is my first problem, although I know it is discussed at length in these forums for over a year now.

My second problem is that you will probably never be done grinding for ascended gear if you are playing in a competitive manner. Todays live-stream foreshadowed not only skill and trait changes in an upcoming patch, but also mechanic changes at a fundamental level.
Every time a balance patch is implemented into the game, there is a chance whole builds will change, need to change to stay competitive, or will simply be replaced. That could mean, at any time, you would need to replace ascended pieces or grind out a totally new set.

For a full ascended set (looking only at craftables here) you will need 3000 Dragonite Ore. A Keep Lord will give an average of 4 of these for a kill (which often means cap). If you are playing only on evenings on a busy server you will probably not be able to enjoy Stonemist that often, so we will use these numbers for an example. Those mentioned busy servers often have their keeps on t3 with an active waypoint and a lot of siege to defend at prime time, that can mean that sometimes you will only cap 1-2 keeps in the whole evening if any while playing for maybe 3-4 hours. So 1-2 Dragonite on average per hour. That means for your whole ascended set, you might need to play for at least 1500-3000 hours to reach that goal, for basic stats that you would have needed within those thousands of hours to be able to perform at the level you desire to reach.

How many balance changes may happen in that time ? And how many will come after you are finally finished ?

Another problem would be acquiring enough gold within that time, as you are constantly using food and utilities and maybe had to change your exotic equipment a few times thanks to new balance changes, but that topic also has been discussed a lot.

The solutions that came to my mind would be:
- Introduce an easy way to get the same tier of equipment for everyone in wvw, that only works in wvw (like spvp or pvp chars in gw1). That seems unlikely at the moment.
- Implement the stat-change-system of legendaries to all ascended pieces. This would be the next best thing, so you would at least be finished with the grind after you have done it once.
- Reverse everything connected to the ascended tier, remove those items from the game and give every player a payout according to their investments (not so serious idea, although it would be the best for wvw imho).

I summarized my thoughts like that with the hope that Josh Davis may get an idea what is really troubling at least a part of the WvW community, maybe especially those invested in it. Another topic would be GvG that is part of WvW atm, wether anyone likes it or not, that has an active community, was a central part of GW1 and has gotten exactly one tiny part of a map dedicated to it. Not enough by far. Also I hope that Josh will be more active and accessible than Devon who has not posted for over a month, posted exactly 17 tiny comments the month before, with 3 of those simply being a single link, and who did not seem interested in the opinions of different active parts of the WvW community; in my opinion.

This got very long, so
tl,dr:
- ascended crafting takes way to long for a pure wvw-player
- introduce stat switch like legendary, or make equipment comparable to spvp/pvp chars in gw1, or remove ascended tier from wvw
- hope josh will be closer to community than devon

I’ve never for a single second thought of Ascended crafting as even close to a requirement to be competitive, and I solo roam around WvW. Considering how dynamic the game is, it would take a pretty extreme situation for that 5% to be the deciding factor.

I can see where getting Ascended gear purely through WvW is a huge chore, but I don’t see how you need Ascended gear for WvW. I consider it a PvE optimization/infusion thing.

Cogbyrn.7283:

it would take a pretty extreme situation for that 5% to be the deciding factor.

The difference is closer to 12.6% with a full set. Personally I’ve come out of many a fight with below 10% health.

For now it’s still barely noticeable but once a significant amount of players have fully ascended sets the exotic players will really begin to feel the sting.

Anyone that thinks that ascended is required to be competitive in WvW probably isn’t very good at WvW.

It’ll give you the edge in roaming versus equally skilled or slightly better players. This is, after all, a game of numbers as all games are when you boil them down.

I’d suggest just crafting what you enjoy playing with primarily and spend any left overs on the fotm. I’m running clerics on my staff ele and settler’s on my roaming build. I enjoy the play style, and I’m just pooling up my resources and waiting for the big March patch to see which direction I want to take next.

the numbers matter, you just don’t see it in the middle of your giant mob of players. if your a part of the scout/camp flip groups that % helps a lot. I get to play 2-3hrs a night, always in wvw. NSP isn’t very good at flipping keeps during my play time, so in the amount of time since ascended armor recipes have released im up to 2 dragonite bars…yup, that’s it.