But, I've thought about Ascended gear multiple times. I have a ton of laurels from when laurels used to be easy to get, and I've never spent them. I could get a bunch of ascended jewelry with them. And I've recently gotten many crafting disciplines to 400, some 450, with plans to get them all to 400 soon.
I've seen studies where the stat difference between Ascended (pink rarity) and Exotic (orange rarity) is about 14%, meaning for every 100pts of stats Exotic provides, Ascended provides 114pts. Slight but possibly noticeable difference.
Then I saw a study today that tabulated the costs of making a set of Ascended armor, and I quickly reaffirm that I probably will never go after ascended armor for my characters.
It doesn't help that I have an alt of each profession, and plan to make a Revenant when the Heart of Thorns expansion releases. That's mighty expensive to deck everyone out in Ascended gear.
But according to the study, it would cost around 500gold to craft a complete set of light ascended armor. That basically blows my mind because the most gold I've ever had at one time was slightly above 100. I don't do a lot of farming, and I've never done fractals. Perhaps if I farmed more often, I could make the gold quicker, but I just don't see me as a casual coming up with that amount and wanting to drop it all on a set of gear.
I'll just throw this in here, gearing up in Guild Wars 2 can be kind of confusing. There are so many stats:
- Power - basic damage
- Precision - chance to crit
- Ferocity - strength of crit
- Healing Power - how much you heal
- Condition Damage - how much conditions do damage
- Boon Duration - how long boons stay on you
- Toughness - how tanky you are
- Vitality - how much life you have
And each piece of gear can have 3 of these stats on it (Celestial has them all but of a lower value). So you can have Power, Precision, Ferocity for pure DPS/Crit. But it isn't as simple as that. Because gear has one major stat and two minor stats. The gear will have more pts of the major and less of the minor. For instance:
- Berserker - Major: Power, Minors: Precision, Ferocity.
- Assassin - Major: Precision, Minors: Power, Ferocity.
- Knight - Major: Toughness, Minors: Power, Precision.
I find it pretty confusing deciding which attributes, which major and minor attributes, I want on my gear. It's never as simple as what some people make it out as, who say to go Berserker for DPS classes and Soldier (Power/Toughness/Vitality) for Tank classes. Many people want to be able to go DPS with Warrior, or go Healing with Elementalist, and thus will need different stats on their gear.
So all of this confusion, and yet I've supposed to invest 500 gold into a set of gear with 3 specific stats? For my Necromancer, the logical option would be a strong focus in Condition Damage, but for some reason, Condition Damage doesn't seem to help Necromancer's damage, so most Necros go Power focus.
The system is too all over the place for me to ever want to settle down with a single set of gear forever. And if I'm dropping 500gold on one character for one set of armor, that armor better be worthy to wear forever (in my opinion).
So, I don't see myself ever investing into ascended gear. It's just too much work and I'll always second guess if I'm wearing the right stat gear or not. And it'll be too expensive to change anything, or to make any mistakes. If the meta changes, I lose 500gold.
So that leads to my last point.
Can ArenaNet release legendary gear?
Will people spend much more gold and time to make legendary gear that could be invalidated by choosing the wrong stats? Or if the meta changes, or if Condition Damage gets fixed?
Ascended Weapons, correct me if I am wrong, has the same stats as Legendary weapons. They are both the Best-in-Slot of their type. Only difference is the unique skin and amazingness of it being a legendary.
Maybe ArenaNet doesn't need to release Legendary armor if Ascended armor already has the same stats. Then again, I'm sure there are some who would love to have all Legendary Gear.
I could see one fix, though, and it's already in the system.
When you craft certain gear, and I think Ascended does this, it lets you choose the prefix (the stat choices). You don't craft Berserker legendary armor, or Assassin legendary armor, you just craft legendary armor and then choose Berserker prefix before you equip it. Once you've chosen it, you can't choose again.
But I believe Legendary weapons can change their prefix anytime outside of battle. Meaning that you can't mess up with choosing the wrong prefix.
Considering that, I'd rather go after crafting Legendary weapons and armor than Ascended. That takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders knowing that I can't make a mistake. All I have to do is come up with a million ba-jillion gold and then I can have the best gear in the game period.
Can ArenaNet release Legendary gear? After second thought, I hope they do. I don't care about Ascended, but I would really like to get legendary armor.
And writing this article has actually rose my interest in crafting a legendary. Account-bound, so I can transfer it to any character I want, and can always change the prefix. Sounds like it's worth the investment with little to no disappointment.
Thanks for reading this rant!
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