Ascended gear: or how I learned to stop worrying and love ArenaNet by ajpearman9

edit 3: My Conclusion After a good few hours of chatting with people here and addressing concerns and issues, I’ve come to my conclusion. Ascended gear will be okay if ArenaNet either makes it as hard to get as legendaries, or the same as exotics, and does not ever introduce another (greater) level of rarity. In addition, Ascended gear needs to be a trade-off when going from Exotics <-> Ascended. You gain infusions for specific encounters at high levels of Fractals, but lose the options of sigils/runes/gems appreciated in other gameplay modes. This is similar to the sigils for +damage against mob types (that basically no one uses despite being amazing).

For the new condition known as Agony, it is there because they want some obvious and clear way for players to know they are reaching the greater levels of dungeon difficulty. This condition must be dealt with in interesting ways and cannot be a plain “you lose health after a while unless you have so much resistance.” That route is not fun, appreciated, or enjoyed by players that were there for WoW’s fire resist and LotRO’s radiance. I guess some may like the idea, but resistances only take away from the idea that player skill > stats and create gates preventing skilled players from enjoying the highest PvE levels of content. This is why I hope infusions are merely a way to specialize and not something that creates a massive gap between grinders and casual players of equal skill.

If any lessons from the current dungeons should be learned, we need more boss fights like Arah’s Giganticus Lupicus, Simin/Dwayna, SE’s Iron Forgeman, Jormag’s Tooth, and more cool puzzles/mechanics like Arah’s orb doors and minefields.

In conclusion, I think the dungeon team is trying to create diversity and interesting boss fights/mechanics, but lacks the ability or time to make encounters based around learning and mastering skillful gameplay and skill/trait specialization. Hopefully they know this and the new Agony mechanic will be overshadowed by the 9 fractals being truly interesting, challenging, and most importantly, fun.

Original Post:

First, let me explain Fractal of the Mists, the new dungeon that is the conduit through which these new items are being introduced. Herein lies some key points that people seem to be missing. Not to mention some amazing-sounding additions to the already massive number of explorable mode dungeons we have.

“The Fractals of the Mists is made up of nine mini-dungeons, each with its own story and environment. A party of five will enter the dungeon and be faced with a random set of three of these dungeons at a time. “Upon completing those three, the party will be transported to a hub to rest, repair, and merch — and the difficulty scale for the dungeon will be raised. Every time the difficulty scale is at an even number, players will face a special boss encounter.” -Massively

• CONCLUSION: This addresses the concerns of so-called “gated content.” I played WoW for over 4 years, I know how gated content looks and feels, and because of WoW’s system, I never got to fully experience the game I paid $15/month for. Fractal of the Mists is a never-ending, increasingly harder dungeon experience, but the scaling of difficulty will not prevent casual players from seeing all 9 fractals, There may be a couple boss fights that only the most hardcore players see, but I sincerely doubt ArenaNet has created such a large number of different bosses.

“Players will be able to acquire Ascended Rings in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and Ascended items worn on the back can be acquired through special Mystic Forge recipes.” -Linsey Murdock

• CONCLUSION: Only back pieces and rings will be added with FotM. This makes the 8% increase in stats from Ascended gear (5 more power / 63 power in exotics = 7.937% increase) minuscule when you take into account your total stats. If someone can do the complete math equation, it would be much appreciated.

“As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.” -Linsey Murdock

• CONCLUSION: Ascended is the new best-in-slot gear (see edit), but as I stated earlier, only back and ring slots will be filled by FotM. Because she states that new Ascended gear pieces for different slots will be introduced with newer dungeons, we can assume that Ascended gear is the only tier that will ever be added to the game (yes this has not been said yet, but I trust ANet to not take this any further).

Once again, we are really making a big deal out of nothing. The new Ascended gear is focused towards competitive PvE-focused players. It gives not only a very tiny statistical increase, but the infusion slots that are included are focused at conditions and monsters that only occur in specific new dungeon types. Once again, people are getting upset because we’re seeing a new item type that is slightly better than exotic, but in the grand scheme of things, the “better” is probably less than a 1% increase per dungeon release.

Just like legendary items (which will gain Ascended-level stats when they release Ascended weapons), Ascended items are items of prestige. They are meant to give the most hardcore players a good and challenging goal to work towards, while not breaking the game or seriously gating content in any way.

People say that this is a step towards WoW in progression, and that’s just utter bullshit. This is ArenaNet introducing a perfect solution to catering to casual and hardcore players, without creating any sort of rift between those two player types.

edit: Omlech pointed out that this new Ascended gear lacks slots for players to choose runes, gems, and sigils (when weapons come out). This means that despite Ascended gear having slightly higher stats, they’re less open to customization and are likely to not even replace exotics in many scenarios. I imagine this is why they are introducing the rings and back slot first, because it will not take away runes/sigils from people. And god knows most people don’t have any sort of decent back piece.

Edit 2: people seem to think they will add tiers past Ascended. This does not seem to be the case. Linsey says they’ll be adding bits and pieces of Ascended gear with each new dungeon. In a few months adding Ascended pieces will be no different than adding exotics to the current state. Ascended pieces are just focused towards this new competitive PvE mode. It’s all about the fact that they don’t feel they can do what they want to with the current exotics. So instead of confusing the hell out of people who already know what Exotics are, they’re creating a new type of gear (of essentially no greater benefit outside of FotM) to meet their needs.