Guild Wars 2

At no point did I ever say that Ascended should be removed, or that it’s the scourge of the earth. All I suggest is keeping its desirability and its status as a stepping-stone between exotic and legendary items without upsetting the stat balance.

Speaking of stats, if the stats are so marginal that it truly doesn’t matter in terms of balance, then why are people so adamant keeping the improved stats? It’s still a better tier than exotic no matter what because of infusion slots, and stat-swapping would more than make up for any loss of power. It’s still prestigious and desirable, which was the entire point to begin with.

We can have item progression without stats, it’s not black-and-white.

Regardless of your own opinion on Ascended gear, it’s painfully obvious that it’s caused a lot of controversy and upset among the player base since its announcement. It seems like a path that ArenaNet’s dedicated themselves to, with no way to back out or change their plans. However, I don’t believe that’s the case.

As much as people love to hate on Ascended weapons in their current state, I’ve seen very few suggestions as to how to actually fix the problem. I personally think that a few simple changes are all that would be needed to satisfy everyone:

Option 1: The simplest option is simply to reduce the stats on Ascended gear down to Exotic levels, bringing everyone back to the same stat base. However, this brings its own problems, namely the fact that many who have already gotten their Ascended items would feel swindled out of their hard work. This is a viable option, but I feel it’s not the most elegant one. This leads me to:

Option 2: Bring down the stats to exotic levels AND add in instant stat switching in the style of legendaries. This simultaneously makes Ascended weapons desirable for their convenience and makes it immensely more convenient when acquiring Ascended gear on your alts, as you only need to create one weapon of that type on that character. This solves the issue of having to acquire multiple weapons across alts, or even multiple stat spreads on a single character. In addition, Ascended weapons are expensive to the point that it would actually be cheaper to purchase multiple variations of the same exotic weapon, so I don’t see this as being too severe of a reward.

If Option 2 was how Ascended gear worked now, it would mean that a character fully decked out in Ascended items has stat-changing convenience at his fingertips, but is not at a statistical advantage to players in exotic gear. I feel that that convenience would be more than enough of an incentive to create Ascended weapons and armor, and would preserve their prestige without outmoding exotics or sacrificing the game’s accessibility. In addition, it would mean that your alts in existing exotic gear are just as viable as your character with full ascended, at the cost of statisical convenience.

Infusion slots are obviously still a concern in regards to stat upgrades, but ArenaNet hasn’t touched on that option just yet. I’d love to hear what you guys think, and your own suggestions on how to improve Ascended gear for everyone!