#ascended weapons

[aileuromania]

Vertoc will do his best to live up to Trahearne’s legacy.

[aileuromania]

Teudila got her Guerilla Arc today (remind me to post pics of the axe wielders who got their ascended weapons a week ago >.<), and so I decided to try for another Best Wallpaper Ever.

I really need Fraps.  heh

[aileuromania]

pod!Gerain is the first to obtain his PoF Ascended weapon. It’s not the most flashy nor even the prettiest rifle I’ve ever seen, but it’s his. He needed it, being the Deadeye he is.

[aileuromania]

Vertoc and his Ydalir on Draconis Mons. Gods I hate that place. One day I may finally get map completion there, but today is not that day.

[nouru-vi]

I arbitrarily decided I'm gonna start hoarding stuff for an ascended scepter because Nouru is an unbelievably spoiled little shit But I refuse to spend a single copper on mats because I still find ascended gear unreasonably expensive so it'll only happen as fast as the almighty RNG allows

[technoturian]

I made a thing! :D

My first crafter to get to 500 and my first Ascended weapon! It's a little too ornate for Sigrun's tastes, luckily come the 15th I'll be able to transmute it without losing the skin forever, then one of my alts can have it.

[pomegarnett]

I just want to point something out...

Guild Wars 2 ascended weapons are a massive waste of time and money. Here's why:

For the sake of example, I'll be using carrion daggers. Assuming you buy all the mats, a level 80 exotic carrion dagger (carrion pearl carver) will cost 7g81s87c. Or you can buy it off the trading post for 2g12s. (source)

In other words, if you have the mats for one dagger, you can sell all of it and buy three. This is probably not the case for all weapons, but after having made two of these daggers, this knowledge kind of made me sad. Note to self: check spidy before crafting anything ever.

The stats on this weapon are:

924-981 weapon strength 90 condition damage 64 power 64 vitality

As for the ascended carrion dagger, Occam's Razor, the total crafting cost is 52g80s63c, 63,000 karma (for obsidian shards), and 20 skill points (for an augur's stone). In addition, you need 500 each of bloodstone dust, dragonite ore, and empyreal fragments, as well as 10 globs of dark matter, all of which you can only get from chests and salvaging. Hope RNG treats you well... (source)

970-1030 weapon strength 94 condition damage 67 power 67 vitality

Um. The increased weapon strength is nice, but not enough to justify the extra 50g, especially when the other stats barely increase. Agony resist is useless to me, and the dagger doesn't even look nice.

Assuming the ascended armor follows the same principle, I probably won't bother with that, either. All the little increases can add up, but I don't think it will be enough to justify the time and cost to craft everything, plus the cost of transmutation crystals because holy crap ugly. (see discussion + images here)

Of course, ugly was probably the intent, but that's a different rant entirely.

For the record, I'm not complaining that making ascended gear is hard. I'm complaining that the benefits do not come close to matching the difficulty. What would make them worth it? Well...

Class-specific weapons/armor. Let me craft something specifically designed for a thief, or a necro, or a guardian. And for gods' sake let it not be over-sexualized or contain a buttcape or trenchcoat. We need gear that is more diverse and more specialized.

Custom stats. I'm tired of coming up with a fun build, only to realize there's no stat combo to suit it. If I could switch the power and condition stats of carrion, I would be ALL OVER IT.

Significantly better stats, like the jump between rare and exotic. However, this could present balancing issues, which could be why they didn't do so originally. Legendary and ascended items are intended to be status symbols more than anything else, but that fails when the ascended items are so ugly you cover them up anyways.

I don't expect my opinion to matter. Writing this really just made me feel better, and gave me something to do at work. However! It's becoming harder and harder for me to tell other people they should play when each new addition pushes me further from the game. 

The storyline is atrocious, the voice acting is horrific, the events are repetitive, there's little diversity in armor, and everything seems to lead players to gambling with RNG and pouring money (real or virtual) into the gem store. 

That's not to say there's nothing good about the game (I've not found a more enjoyable mmorpg), but I'm getting bored and ascended gear does nothing to fix that.