Adding my voice of dissent to this thread. There is no need for this implementation. I’ve played a little bit nearly every day since release, and have just finished completing my first dungeon set. I had planned to put together a couple more to have stat options. What would my compelling reason be now, with Ascended armor coming soon? and then, what point would that have with further gear likely to come down the line?
The notion of a horizontal progression was one of the key elements of this game’s design that I loved. I’m very worried to see it going away.
If the ascended gear was equivalent in stats, and provided a bonus within the fractals, and only in the fractals, and that bonus could improve as you went deeper…I’d be ok with that. Other implementations are highly suspect.