Nope. Mine is still account bound even though I have an exotic gem in it.
They’ve already stated that they’re going to be implementing more ways to get ascended gear in the future, and I’m fine with that. I’ve always liked how easy it was to get exotic gear, and I really don’t care if the same applies to ascended stuff.
At the moment, ascended gear means virtually nothing unless you want access to fractal weapons that only drop in the higher difficulties. Not that it matters, since they’re essentially just unique skins.
You also don’t need any T6 mats whatsoever unless you REALLY want to have a virtually useless +5 to a single stat along with the agony resistance in your infusion slot, which they’re probably going to make more readily available elsewhere in the future.
Edit: Only issue is that you still need ectoplasm, which is kind of a problem as is immediately obvious by how the price on the TP has skyrocketed in the past week.
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You don’t need infusions in the 10-19 bracket. Agony rarely even downs you outright in that bracket unless you make a serious error.
Yeah, you don’t really need it at all to experience all of the content. The only reason you’d actually need it is to go to high difficulties in fractals for no apparent reason other than to say that you can, or if one of those fractal weapon skins floats your boat.
I’m going to eventually get an ascended backpiece because I happen to enjoy doing fractals, and the tokens afterwards will help me with obsidian shards on the path to my legendary.
Have you actually…you know…played in a bracket where agony is present?
That’s what agony is in nearly all situations. Another condition applied to already existing boss attacks that punishes you for not avoiding it, and if you really think that resistance is going to let you sit there and facetank all the bosses attacks with agony in them, you’re going to be looking at a pretty hefty repair bill.
The ONLY exception to the 100% avoidable rule is the Jade Maw, and even that can be played around in the 10-19 bracket with little difficulty.
I’m confused. Is there even any real tangible need to beat levels 50+ if you don’t gain anything from doing so? It’s an endless dungeon, there’s only so much they can do to reward players who get so far before it starts getting truly ridiculous. I’d think that going up to level 50 just to say that you can would be it’s own reward.
Oh, he’s fun when he starts applying agony. Just means I need to save two dodges or a shield stance to avoid his ground pound, otherwise, it’s pretty much the same.
And I’d be truly concerned if I haven’t already experienced every fractal several times already without needing agony resistance. In no way am I being denied the meat of the content because of my lack of ascended gear. What do I not get to have if I don’t have ascended gear?
Some unique weapon skins that I’m not even a fan of and ascended gear that already has agony resistance on it.
Whoop-de-doo.
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There’s already a way for people who aren’t running to make it easier for the runners that is 100% profession independent.
Run in front of them and trip the traps so it doesn’t hit people who are carrying wisps.
Then you use some condition removal and stun breaks to get out of cripple/immobilize/knockdown and keep going. Every single profession in the game has some of these.
I’ve gotten almost 50 ectos in three days just running dungeons. Supply has actually gone UP, but there are also more things to use them on.
Not really feeling it. It’s possible to play around agony in the 10-19 bracket without needing resistance.
I’ll just be getting the infused backpiece that doesn’t require any T6 mats. Not much else to spend the tokens on besides obsidian shards, and saves T6 mats for my legendary.
I understand that logic. However the challenge of higher ranks past that (say 20+) still seems to be gated. Now if the only difference 20+ was that agony hits harder than I would argue that you are right since content would effectively be the same. However mobs (trash, etc) do change and become more difficult to deal with.
And? Somehow I doubt that a couple of silly rings and a backpiece that result in a total of +30 to their primary statistic over equivalent exotics is going to make or break having to deal with those enemies.
Not really feeling it. It’s possible to play around agony in the 10-19 bracket without needing resistance.
I’ll just be getting the infused backpiece that doesn’t require any T6 mats. Not much else to spend the tokens on besides obsidian shards, and saves T6 mats for my legendary.
That’s why I wear cultural sets, because they do in fact look amazing on Charr. There’s also several pieces from karma vendors, dungeons, and even a few crafted pieces that look quite good.
I’m personally a fan of the light heritage set for my Charr elementalist. Something about it just tickles me.
The jade enemies actually reflect projectiles all of the time.
But Engineers have bombs, grenades and flamethrowers to get around that. It’s possible to damage them with the blast radius from grenades without being reflected, and the other two kits are self-explanatory.
I’ll just be crafting the ones that only require dungeon tokens and keep the T6 mats for my legendary rifle.
Also, given that the stat differences between exotics and ascendeds are pretty low, there should be no real reason to do FoTM as high as humanly possible each time or to not do it with lower level people who might need help. I mean, the drops aren’t any better, the fractal pieces don’t drop more and other than ascended rings (which again have a pretty minor increase stat wise over exotics), people seem to think that going as high as you can with fractals is the only way to go.
But I don’t see the point in it.
Just because people think they need to fragment the community doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
the stat differences are not low. back pack is +18%, ring is +50%.
They’re low when you actually take total stat pools into account and stop comparing generalist divinity stat distributions to specialized stat distributions.
It would help and not totally destabilize your argument if you actually compared ascended rings with berserker’s stats with their exotic equivalent.
Take that Ancient Karka Shell accessory with +25 to all stats. It’s got a lot more total stat points than an exotic berserker’s earring despite being of the same rarity, not to mention that there’s no jewel in the game that provides + to all stats at the moment.
Red Ring of Death vs an Exotic Berserker’s Ring with Exotic Jewel is much less extreme.
Max height Charr Warrior here. Literally all I do is throw on the stability, stun breaks, and condition removal and run through everything.
Doing it perfectly is an exaggeration. I end up plowing into plenty of traps and still manage to complete it in on the first or second try. All you really need is to wait for everyone to be in position and have a nice easy 3-2-1 countdown in chat.
I think you have it the other way around.
The sense of progression is there on top of the fun you get from playing, not instead of it. People would still play Fractals even if there was no Agony, no difficulty progression, and the loot was always the same – aka as any other dungeon. But since people like the ‘sense of progression’, even if it’s completely artificial, it’s there – on top of the usual stuff, not in its place.
It’s like Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer’s xp levels, especially the prestige levels. They give you absolutely nothing, but are a way to ‘reward’ you with this sense of progression if you keep playing even after having done everything there is to do.
This as well. I mean, it’s nice that I’ll be able to get ascended gear and stuff, but I wouldn’t be playing if I didn’t enjoy the content in the first place.
Ascended gear is hardly even required until 20+ from what I hear. On level 14 now, and I haven’t yet encountered a situation where my groups were being denied progress solely because of agony.
I like this.
I mean, I’d like to have a quiver at some point, but it’s nice to know that I won’t need to scratch the funds together to get some agony resistance if it actually becomes a problem.
Vorpal bunny one-shotted me.
I laughed.
I’ve done this multiple times with no issues in 100% PuGs. You just need to figure out who is doing what and have a simple countdown before starting the run.
I want to see how far I can push myself without needing agony resistance.
That’s my carrot.
Agreed. I’ve had loads of fun with them up to this point, and agony isn’t as big of a problem as I thought it would be pre-level 20 at least.
I’ll get it when I get it. I don’t even need it anywhere except Fractals, and I can easily play all of the fractals on a lower difficulty level without having to worry about it.
Why shouldn’t fractal and dungeon completions be part of the monthly achievement? What makes any other criteria more valid than either of those, and where are they holding a gun to your head to ‘force’ you to do the monthly achievement?
There’s a lot of other things to do besides shoot at siege equipment from a distance during that fractal…like controlling the fairly significant number of mobs running around and helping to keep people topped off through incidental arrow cart damage.
Afterwards, you know to throw on a weapon with more range when you start that particular fractal. I ran into the same situation on my Warrior since I typically run with two melee sets, but I never felt like I was doing nothing or was being useless because of it.
Mountain out of a molehill if I ever saw one.
It’s actually perfectly fine. There’s plenty of ways to keep him from healing even if you mess up on the buckets, and a simple immobilize once the boss is on the rather obvious patch of ground that doesn’t have ice/snow on it makes landing the lava fairly effortless if the person with aggro isn’t completely unaware of what’s going on.
Cliffside is pretty simple once you figure out that you need to get kill credit on one of the cultists to charge the hammer’s 4th ability up. Just pick one of the non-veterans to focus and it goes pretty quickly. There’s also a small safe zone in the middle of the scaffolding that none of the fire reaches and your entire group can stack up there to be safe.
The karka shells can be used to craft Apothecary’s insignias and inscriptions, and they should have been added to your list of recipes automatically.
Agreed. The reinforcements bits were needlessly long and tedious, though I almost feel like they were intentionally so to give as many people as possible a chance to participate, since the other segments were done relatively quickly. Still could have done with a bit of toning down or something to make it more interesting.
I’m not seeing the problem here, since I’m pretty sure those weapons simply have unique appearances with exotic stats, and exotic statted items are very easy to obtain elsewhere. Ascended weapons aren’t even in the game yet as far as I’m aware.
This is exactly the kind of RNG grind that’s appropriate; for unique cosmetics.
Non-issue. The jumps in FotM aren’t even equivalent to a mild vista. There’s no tricky angles or timing to consider; they all consist of simply moving forward and jumping onto generously sized platforms.
Two full sets of armor and at least one of each weapon I can use on my Warrior. Crafted the stats for my first armor set and transmuted Charr heavy T3 over them. Second set I got half from dungeons and half from karma in Orr, and threw on a mix of heavy T2 and crafted aesthetics.
All exotic jewelry except one ring left. Just used whatever materials I had accumulated during normal play to craft them, and I really wasn’t fussed about going past rare in the first place since the difference was so miniscule and it didn’t look shiny like my armor does.
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That would be the T3 cultural set. The whole thing goes for over 100g.
I’m suddenly reminded of Insignias from GW1.
Icebreaker from HoM has been the only one I’ve really liked.
Fast Hands, first and foremost. I love that trait when it works.
Discipline’s second statistic not being useless would be nice as well.
Best not to reveal too much of anything until you have a more concrete timeline on a feature’s release, because something more pressing may come up. Suddenly, your extremely tentative timeline just got thrown out the window, or features that you may want to implement end up not working out as planned and need to be axed or reworked entirely, making that extremely early preview completely irrelevant.
I don’t perceive those to be legitimate issues.
Insteaad, think of something like in HoTW explorables with the bosses that ‘use ice magic’. Why is their channeled ice breath attack unblockable when a boss with a similar attack in CM can be blocked? Why does the final path 3 boss in HoTW have an annoying earth sink ability that is undodgable? Why does another mid-boss in path 2 or 3 of HoTW have undodgable or unblockable fear attacks when other effects can be avoided using dodges or blocks? They changed the rules right in the middle of the game that flies directly in the face of everything I learned during play up to that point. THOSE are legitimate issues.
No, not really. Then again, I don’t really know what the criteria of graveyard zerging is beyond running back from the waypoint after dying to a fight still in progress.
If it’s by that definition, I haven’t done very much of that since just after launch. Usually I’m the one not being dead or something truly catastrophic has happened and everyone died, not just me.
And no, I rarely if ever have premade groups. I find all of my groups in map chat in Lion’s Arch within 10 minutes. The more obscure dungeons take a little longer, but depending on the time of day, decent PuGs are not in short supply.
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People still graveyard zerg? I haven’t done that in a legitimate PuG (people are actually the minimum level for the dungeon) since the first couple of weeks after launch, unless it’s that strat in CoF path 2 because most people are too lazy to do it the ‘hard’ way with no deaths, even though it’s probably easier and faster to do it that way if done correctly.
This is BS…. you know as does everyone else know who has played this that you have ran back to a fight in a dungeon and not just when you first started.
Sure I did…when I was learning the fight and didn’t know what I was doing just yet. Notice the part ‘first couple of weeks after launch’.
I change up my weapons, utilities and major traits constantly. If I die, on the way back I think about what was problematic on my previous attempt then take steps to mitigate that. Nothing in my toolbox is exempt from being switched in for a fight or two even if I don’t have the best gear or trait support for it. Yes, that means as a Warrior, I carry at least one of each of my weapons, two if they can be dual-wielded.
Trial and error? Sure, but that’s the way it’s been even in other MMOs when learning new content until there’s a hundred videos up on Youtube about it.
People still graveyard zerg? I haven’t done that in a legitimate PuG (people are actually the minimum level for the dungeon) since the first couple of weeks after launch, unless it’s that strat in CoF path 2 because most people are too lazy to do it the ‘hard’ way with no deaths, even though it’s probably easier and faster to do it that way if done correctly.
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Except you aren’t getting one-shot, because you actually have a chance to get out of the pin even if you get caught by it. Have one of the four other people in the group who are apparently doing nothing use a CC to get you out if your resources are depleted.
They should, because it’s virtually useless. Every other profession has at least a vaguely useful secondary statistic in their fifth trait line except Warriors.
Then…you have stun breaks and CC to fall back on. Or maybe a simple jump skill that allows you to hop out of range.