Greetings Tyrians!
With the next release we will be making some changes to ascended vending in PvP and Fractals. Over the past year we introduced ways to obtain ascended gear via participation in either game mode thus allowing players to acquire gear by playing the game mode they chose. We implemented these vendors in a way that made sense for their perspective player base at the time. With the next release we are making two significant changes to these vendors to create one system that functions the same regardless of game mode.
First, each game mode will still use a specific currency unique to that mode as part of the price but the rest of the costs associated with purchasing the gear will be the same across the game modes. Having a unified system for acquiring ascended gear via vendors will give us more flexibility for adjustments, if they are needed, and it will give us the flexibility to potentially introduce this system in other game modes where appropriate.
Second, purchasing the ascended gear will now rely much more on player crafting. The cost for a piece of gear will now include a crafted token which shows a player’s mastery of the appropriate crafting discipline, the game mode specific currency, and raw gold. Ascended crafting is vital to sustaining a healthy economy and it is important that we keep that in place even when a player acquires ascended items via a vendor. For PvP, this will add a considerable cost to the acquisition of ascended gear. Please note that you will be able to buy gear with current prices until the update is live.
Ascended vending is not intended to be the optimal path for acquiring ascended gear, but rather a way for players to acquire the gear through time spent playing their preferred game mode. And while ascended vending now requires max level crafting, players that obtain ascended gear via vending will see a moderate discount in cost over traditional crafting.