Point of level <80 exotic item drops

Exotic weapons drop pretty rarely (may get a couple from a meta or something - I do know that magic find affects then). So when I get an exotic, I look at that, and then 90% of the time see it is some stat combo that is worthless (even on the TP, which I suspect people may just be buying for salvage value).So even more rarely I get an exotic drop with a stat combo that would actually be useful, and then I see it is for level 78, so the stats are a little lower than those of a level 80.Is the goal of this to just make the best exotics even rarer? Because being able to use them at level 78 vs level 80 seems a very minor advantage, based on how quickly one gains levels.Just curious on this one, as it just seems a little odd & annoying.

Very annoying, especially in those monthly login profession chests.

You equip them until you get the level 80 version later. It's a way for the game to give you something good, but not so good that you don't have something to chase after still.

They are there to provide you with Globs of Ectoplasm (so, they are mostly a salvage material). Alternatively you can use them in mystic forge to try for precursors.

You could run level 79 exotics back in the day when cheap transmutation charges worked only on items of levels 1-79. Other than that - they drop because they can.

I think before launch Anet expected level 80 exotics to be harder to obtain. Not to the point where we'd still be working on them 6 years later, but enough that lower level exotics and level 80 rares would be useful to at least some people. I remember them talking about how hard dungeons would be and how things like the Orr temples would require coordination between several guilds to take. (Not sure about crafting, I don't think it was supposed to be difficult, but I guess without a ready supply of T6 materials and ecto from drops it would be more expensive.)

Then until HoT launched, or a bit after, people were still throwing hundreds of exotics into the Mystic Forge to try for precursors, which kept the prices up a bit. And until relatively recently ectoplasm was quite expensive which again created a demand for them.

Now we've hit a point where none of those things are happening. Although it did make me realise the low price of most exotics and their salvage materials means it couldn't hurt to try throwing some in the Forge. With my luck I'll only lose money, but at least it wouldn't be much money. (A bit like when I realised the nerf to Maize Balm had crashed the price so much that even if you mostly got candy corn from the elementals it spawned you were making roughly 300% profit...but the numbers were so low it wasn't worth doing even for me.)

Skin unlocks with stats. I guess.

You were never really intended to find your gear via drops......at best it would be a rare skin. At launch, you had 3 major sources of guaranteed max stat gear; Crafting, Dungeons and Karma Vendors. Thus the value of any non-skin valued drop is in proportion to the materials its produces, or the materials needed to produce it. Everything else, including the level and stat types on offer, are basic RNG principles at work.

The "goal" of anything drop related is to fuel TP activity.

Salvage fodder, you'll need to salvage some if you plan on doing ascended gear crafting since it's the only way to get globs of dark matter.

@"Danikat.8537" said:I think before launch Anet expected level 80 exotics to be harder to obtain. Not to the point where we'd still be working on them 6 years later, but enough that lower level exotics and level 80 rares would be useful to at least some people. I remember them talking about how hard dungeons would be and how things like the Orr temples would require coordination between several guilds to take. (Not sure about crafting, I don't think it was supposed to be difficult, but I guess without a ready supply of T6 materials and ecto from drops it would be more expensive.)

Then until HoT launched, or a bit after, people were still throwing hundreds of exotics into the Mystic Forge to try for precursors, which kept the prices up a bit. And until relatively recently ectoplasm was quite expensive which again created a demand for them.

Now we've hit a point where none of those things are happening. Although it did make me realise the low price of most exotics and their salvage materials means it couldn't hurt to try throwing some in the Forge. With my luck I'll only lose money, but at least it wouldn't be much money. (A bit like when I realised the nerf to Maize Balm had crashed the price so much that even if you mostly got candy corn from the elementals it spawned you were making roughly 300% profit...but the numbers were so low it wasn't worth doing even for me.)

Yes, and I think this is also the main reason they introduced Ascended tier. People got exotics pretty much right away and were like "okay now what?".

I think the issue now is not that we have <80 exotic gear, it's that exotic gear in general doesn't drop often enough. The same argument could probably be made for rare gear.