Is Ascended gear required?

Aside from the obvious reason you need Acended gear being Agony Resist infusions is it really a requirement for doing casual stuff. I have a full set of Ascended trinkets, as well as 2H sword, 1H Sword, Shield, and a Longbow. However I just cant afford to craft visable ascended items, especially since I have every class at 80 lol. How much stat/dps loss are we talking when comparing full exotic armor to ascended armor? Will I still be able to faceroll story mode even if im only wearing exotic gear?

It's not required to beat any content besides high tier fractals. Weapons are very important because they have a higher base damage, but stat wise you're not missing out on too much. I think it's like 500 total stat difference with 100% exotic, not the biggest deal.

The most important thing is having level 80 armor with the right stats and using runes and sigils for your gear.

To expand on what Blocki wrote above:Having an actually thought through build matters way more than gear tier.A full set of Rare gear with stats, runes and sigils that actually fit your skills will be more effective than a random hodge-podge of Ascended gear.

Of course, since Ascended takes a lot more deliberate action to get, and often gives you some controll over what stats it has, very few even accidentally equip a random hodge-podge of Ascended.

Tl;dr - Exotic will work just fine, for core PS even Rare will be enough.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, it is absolutely not needed.

There is a couple of items which are useful to have at ascended quality, mainly weapons and trinkets. The actual stat improvements are not as important, especially on armor.

I've posted the difference multiple times, it comes down to approximately:

Exotic vs ascended:Weapons: ~10% stat difference, most important is the higher damage value of ascended weaponsTrinkets: ~10-12% stat difference, most being on amulet, least on the back pieceArmor: ~5-7% stat difference, most important being the higher base armor value of ascended weapons

Having the correct stat combination is vastly more important than the quality. The actual stat difference can be made up for easily by outplaying your opponent (WvW) or being slightly better at your class/rotation (PvE).

The only area ascended is absolutely required is T4 fractals for the agony resistance, any one who tells you otherwise, never take advice from that person again.

One more thing to note - people will often say "you need ascended to do X" when what is more true is "most people will expect you to have ascended when doing X" - raids for example. It has been proven repeatedly that exotic is more than enough, but ascended supply a tiny bit bigger margin for error.

On the other hand, craft your first ascended gear, make your way to T4, do daily T4s, soon enough you will have couple of alts geared into ascended.On the topic several of my alst are using exotic armor i got from pvp, ascended trinkets and ascended weapons, they do just fine even in HoT and PoF story.If they don't, it's fully my fault, not the exotic armor.

One common compromise is to use exotic armour and even weapons and ascended trinkets from the laurel vendor. That gives you a bit of a boost (because trinkets contribute a lot to your stats) with minimal cost/difficulty for anyone not using a free account. (Free accounts don't get login rewards so laurels are much harder to get - but I would say if someone on a free account is working on getting ascended equipment it's probably time to admit they're sticking with the game and should buy it.)

It's certainly good enough for open-world PvE and story, and even enough for most Fractals because you can put agony resistance on the trinkets.

And on a related note the downside of ascended not being needed is if you do get it you can't expect things which were previously difficult to be 'face-roll easy'. It's a small boost to your stats so it will help, but you'll never get to the point in this game where your gear can carry you and you can easily defeat enemies without having to think about what you're doing. You'll still need to dodge and move around and use skills effectively.

so when do ascended pieces start dropping like candy? I think Im up to Fractal level 45 but never get any from boxes or chests.

They are from the fractal dailies chests.

@Khisanth.2948 said:They are from the fractal dailies chests.

so a tier 1 has same chance to drop them as a t4?

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:They are from the fractal dailies chests.

Obviously not, T1 has around 1% drop chance per chest, T4 is around 10%.

If you finish all 3 T4 dailies and end up with all the chests, you can expect around 1-2 ascended items per week on average. Sometimes it will be more, sometimes it will be less.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:

@"Khisanth.2948" said:They are from the fractal dailies chests.

The cumulative chance of getting an ascended box (armor or weapon) is around 12-14% from T4 (because you get each of the four rewards, T1, T2, T3, & T4). For T3, that drops below 7%, for T2 ~2.3%, and T1 is under 1%. The biggest difference is for weapon chests: the data I have shows 0 drops for T1 and the T4 reward is over twice as likely to drop one as the T3.

That said, it's pretty common to have very, very long "no box" streaks interrupted by short streaks with several boxes a week, sometimes doubles.

Or in other words, T4 fract dailies is a reliable source of ascended gear in the long run. It's not a good source for when you need a set 'now' or even 'soon'.

It's definitely worthwhile to get ascended trinkets, and weapons aren't too hard to come by if you're selective about what you get. Ascended armor isn't really critical. I think I have maybe two pieces across all my characters. It's always been fine for story, OW, and < T4 fractals. Maybe not for T4 or raids, but if that's your thing, you might have to optimize more.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:

@"Khisanth.2948" said:They are from the fractal dailies chests.

Agreed, the numbers I used is what I was subjectively experiencing and what I had read a few years back when the current system was introduced. Your numbers seem correct.

Yes, and at 14% daily chance for a chest, 1-2 items are realistic. I do agree though that it can take a while to get an item or get very lucky and get items back to back. I've experienced both (not counting the random nature on top of which, I'm currently sitting on 5 ascended boots chests for example). I guess the best advice for new fractal players would be: you'll get it eventually. Just enjoy the content until then.

@Cyninja.2954 said:I guess the best advice for new fractal players would be: you'll get it eventually. Just enjoy the content until then.Yeah, I'd agree with that.

FYI what I did was take [KING]'s explicit data of how many drops of each type they got from each reward tier and then run a simulation of results from 10,000 fractals (and another one that has 10,000 days of running three fractals, as is common). That was because I didn't want to depend on everyone agreeing about the math for calculating the odds. Results show that at least someone in that crowd of 10k are going to go 6-8 weeks without any armor|weapon boxes, slightly better than once a week is average.

@Dabrixmgp.4758 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:They are from the fractal dailies chests.

Yes and no.

the t1, t2, t3(also t4 for weapons) should be the same chances but when completing a t3/t4 you get 3/4 times as many chests. While the chances for each chest might be the same by opening more you are going to reach the expected result sooner

in the case of the t4 chest it also moves the chances of dropping shoulder, hat and glove from rare to uncommon so you will start seeing more ascended boxes just from those

Your personal fractal level also has a significant impact on the quality of loot, regardless of what tier you're in. Eg. Someone with a Personal Fractal LV 100 will see better drops from T1 chests than a player with Personal Fractal LV 20 running the same instance.

EDIT: some anecdotal evidence. I usually get at least 1 ascended ring from doing T4 dailies, but last night I got 2 rings (1 infused), 1 chest of shoulders, and 3 (!) ascended salvaging tools. Never seen a haul like that before, and don't expect to see it again any time soon lol

@ the OP: If you're not doing fractals or in need of the infusion slots, then you absolutely don't need Ascended Gear, but it certainly does help. So build up your inventory of mats, and craft 'em when you can. You can easily face roll story mode content in Exotic gear, as truly, your build choice and personal skill play more of a role than the "math" of gear.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:Your personal fractal level also has a significant impact on the quality of loot, regardless of what tier you're in. Eg. Someone with a Personal Fractal LV 100 will see better drops from T1 chests than a player with Personal Fractal LV 20 running the same instance.EDIT: some anecdotal evidence. I usually get at least 1 ascended ring from doing T4 dailies, but last night I got 2 rings (1 infused), 1 chest of shoulders, and 3 (!) ascended salvaging tools. Never seen a haul like that before, and don't expect to see it again any time soon lol

Uh? I don't see any reason for someone with higher personal level getting better rewards unless you're implying the person with higher personal level probably has the Fractal masteries while the other doesn't.Sometimes i get 0 rings, sometimes i get 4 rings and 1 accessory, and i've had a bad streak with no ascended chests for almost 10 days, and once i got 4 ascended chests on a single day. Just RNG.

@BRNBRITO.9624 said:

@"Turkeyspit.3965" said:Your personal fractal level also has a significant impact on the quality of loot, regardless of what tier you're in. Eg. Someone with a Personal Fractal LV 100 will see better drops from T1 chests than a player with Personal Fractal LV 20 running the same instance.EDIT: some anecdotal evidence. I usually get at least 1 ascended ring from doing T4 dailies, but last night I got 2 rings (1 infused), 1 chest of shoulders, and 3 (!) ascended salvaging tools. Never seen a haul like that before, and don't expect to see it again any time soon lol

Uh? I don't see any reason for someone with higher personal level getting better rewards unless you're implying the person with higher personal level probably has the Fractal masteries while the other doesn't.Sometimes i get 0 rings, sometimes i get 4 rings and 1 accessory, and i've had a bad streak with no ascended chests for almost 10 days, and once i got 4 ascended chests on a single day. Just RNG.

"I", am saying nothing; I'm merely paraphrasing the wiki.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists#Difficulty_scale

For those not patient enough to load a webpage:

Increased personal levels offer increased rewards, even if the run is at a lower difficulty level. Higher difficulty levels offer greater challenges and higher chances of better rewards, from foes, chests, and bonus chests.

Well it might be then i guess? My personal experience playing on main and alt accs tells me otherwise but i'm not 100% sure.