Why are Astral Coin Ascended Armor/Weapon Chests Core stats only?

[Ashantara.8731]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:25 AM, ZBoss.5610 said:

This is silly

...but has been and is the case with any ascended armor boxes you can obtain in the game.

[Lion.6590]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:33 AM, jason.1083 said:

Because I presume they're trying to gatekeep these stats from F2P people since they too have access to these selection boxes.

Maybe they could work something out so you get selections from them based on the expansions you own or something.

Ascended equipment with selectable will have stats available based on which expansions you own, so a F2P wouldn't be able to pick expansions stats anyway.

The reason why they made WV ascended gear like that is probably to give more value for items used in ascended equipment stats swapping and to allow people to convert them into research notes.

Edited March 30 by Lion.6590

[willow.8209]

16 hours ago, Player.2475 said:

Don't rely on the ascended chests for ascended gear. It's a trick. Buy everything else, sell it, max crafting, and craft the weapons/armor yourself. It'll be worth it, and this will be the only time you need to do it. The entire journey costs as much as 1-2 pieces of ascended, and you can always sell the products or get research notes out of them to get back a bit of your money.

Some other helpful tips for new players:

Crafting is the only viable way to get ascended armor and weapons fast. Everything else is too slow and unreliable. You can get enough gold for a full set of ascended armor/weapons in less than a week of playing if you really put your mind to it. Hell, I make enough gold for 1 piece just doing a couple metas every morning.
For accessories:  When starting out, Living Story Season 3 and 4 are really good, Icebrood Saga is decent if you can do some achievements and masteries. It will probably take you a couple metas + gathering the nodes in the map for a few days to get 1 piece of that map's currency. Bitterfrost frontier is probably the easiest and most solo-friendly area. Doing fractals will also consistently get you ascended + infused accessories and materials to buy more, but you need ascended gear to do higher tiers.

That said, if you DO get a chest, you can always stat-swap to your desired stats for a fraction of the price. Look up stat swapping recipes on the wiki. Also don't buy recipes for Harrier gear: they cost 40g, when you can just craft some other stat combination, craft the Harrier insigna, and stat-swap.

I'm kind of confused by this advice. You want people to *both* sell all their crafting mats *and* craft.

Unless you have a full bank of crafting mats or a full wallet of gold, I don't see how that would work. I see it as a choice: sell the mats and buy what you want *or* use the mats to craft.

Edited March 30 by willow.8209

[Lucy.3728]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:55 AM, jokke.6239 said:

It isn't so expensive to change stats

Minstrel at least is not worth it. Too expensive. I went for the ascended wvw armor instead, cheaper than changinig core stats armor.

[Lucy.3728]

18 hours ago, fourhim.3584 said:

I'm pretty sure the Ascended weapon chest option has all stat choices, doesn't it?  I remember I got Celestial weapons from it.  If so, it's not that they don't want to give these stat options to players on their armor.  It looks to me more like they forgot to.

You get all stats that even Tequatl drops. Not more. Wupwup (celestial) is one of it. And beside Berserker the only other useful stats combination you can use nowadays in end game. The rest is outdated, useful to salvage for the dark balls for legendary stuff.

[Lucy.3728]

22 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Probably because it's another type of "catch up" element for new players that soto introduced and not something that's intended to be the main source of your ascended gear. I don't see how changing stats in mystic forge is supposed to be a huge deal at all.

Then it'd make sense to offer meta stats and not stat combinations that are not used anymore (except for Wupwup and Zoja).

I think it's the f2p player access denial thing.

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

Then it'd make sense to offer meta stats and not stat combinations that are not used anymore (except for Wupwup and Zoja).

No, it wouldn't, if you actually play the game, changing the stats shouldn't be a big deal at all. And btw, if you want to go for the endgame, you can still do that even without min-maxed "meta" builds.

 

4 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

I'm kind of confused by this advice. You want people to *both* sell all their crafting mats *and* craft.

I might be missing something here, but where did he write about selling their crafting mats?

Edited March 30 by Sobx.1758

[Lucy.3728]

4 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

No, it wouldn't, if you actually play the game, changing the stats shouldn't be a big deal at all. And btw, if you want to go for the endgame, you can still do that even without min-maxed "meta" builds.

I struggled with ascended minstrel equipment, actually I still am. Still collecting for the last piece from the ascended wvw armor because that's easier and cheaper to obtain than bother with the core stats armor and the mystic toilet.

And wvw meta has 3 support slots that wear minstrel armor (out of 5 in the subgroup). It's a high demand stats combination.

edit: And I'm not talking about my main account. That one can afford whatever. I'm talking about new accounts.

Edited March 30 by Lucy.3728

[Sobx.1758]

13 minutes ago, Lucy.3728 said:

I struggled with ascended minstrel equipment, actually I still am. Still collecting for the last piece from the ascended wvw armor because that's easier and cheaper to obtain than bother with the core stats armor and the mystic toilet.

What are you struggling with exactly? This is not a rhetorical question btw.

13 minutes ago, Lucy.3728 said:

And wvw meta has 3 support slots that wear minstrel armor (out of 5 in the subgroup). It's a high demand stats combination.

edit: And I'm not talking about my main account. That one can afford whatever. I'm talking about new accounts.

Ah yes, so new players are so compeltely locked out of endgame content because they can't shoot straight for that one tanky support items just when they started playing the game 😉 

Edited March 30 by Sobx.1758

[Oberon.3965]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:37 PM, hellsmachine.4085 said:

I play this game for the combat, I don't want to dedicate an hour alt tabbing, looking at the wiki, buying mats, clicking through menus etc... it's weird that you would defend something that is such an easy change for anet, that would greatly improve the game for players like me.

Crafting being the only viable way to get ascended made me originally quit the game, I came back and stayed when I found out I can get ascended by just playing the game. The combat system is the best part of this game, I want more of it, not less of it.

That's fair.

I feel exactly the same about being forced to play WvW to get Gifts of Battle for my Gen 1 Legendary weapons. I'm sitting on precursors and mats for three of them, and just don't enjoy playing WvW. I've tried and I'd rather not play the game... it's frustrating. 

[Player.2475]

10 hours ago, willow.8209 said:

I'm kind of confused by this advice. You want people to *both* sell all their crafting mats *and* craft.

Unless you have a full bank of crafting mats or a full wallet of gold, I don't see how that would work. I see it as a choice: sell the mats and buy what you want *or* use the mats to craft.

I was thinking more in terms of the Wizard's Vault rewards. It can be generalized, since bags will give you a random assortment of materials, and most of the materials you get are materials you will never directly craft with. Even if you naively sold all materials you got without knowing you need them to craft something, you only lose 15% of its value due to tax.

As for the WV:

• 90 non-repeatable gold bags for 6 AA each -> 90g for 540 AA
• 60 non-repeatable mystic coins for 9 AA each -> 114g for 540 AA
• 30 non-repeatable heavy crafting bags for 8 AA each -> 22.5g for 240 AA
• 20 non-repetable mastery coffers for 15 AA each -> 20g for 300 AA

Depending on stats and weapon type or armor weight, 1 piece of ascended costs 20-40g. You can go for a cheaper stat combination and stat-swap it for like 1-3g.

In other words, you will most likely be able to fully fill ascended armor and weapon slots if you get other Vault rewards instead of wasting your time on the garbage 400 or 600 AA ascended chests. Even if you are going for the most expensive ascended set, you will get almost twice the value for the same amount of AA from the other rewards.

In conclusion: the 3 ascended armor chests and especially the 1 ascended weapon chest are overpriced.
 

Edited March 30 by Player.2475

[Lucy.3728]

15 hours ago, Oberon.3965 said:

I feel exactly the same about being forced to play WvW to get Gifts of Battle for my Gen 1 Legendary weapons. I'm sitting on precursors and mats for three of them, and just don't enjoy playing WvW. I've tried and I'd rather not play the game... it's frustrating. 

I get you as many GoBs as you need, if you get me some GoEs ;D

I attempted often enough, with several chars, to run a second world complete. But I always quit after a while 😞 Once is really enough. It's just so boring and dull.
I rather do 100 metas again than one world complete.

I wish Anet would add a trade system like 4 GoBs for 2 GoEs.

Edited March 31 by Lucy.3728

[Lucy.3728]

19 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Ah yes, so new players are so compeltely locked out of endgame content because they can't shoot straight for that one tanky support items just when they started playing the game

Who said that?

I'm all minstrel exotic, at least armor and weapons.

I'm not struggling with exotic equipment. Why do you make it sound like that?

My youngest acc is almost 6 months old. I've one berserker ascended armor and weapon set from the vault. Took two vault circles. That's like 4 months?
The runes were the actual expensive stuff.
Unfortunately that char isn't meta (anymore). I've no warrior and meta-holo is hard to learn and really difficult to master. I rather go support chrono to be a useful meta-peon.

For an ascended minstrel armor I'm lacking grandmaster mark shards. I'll have them at some point, just by playing wvw, but takes a while.

For using the toilet I lack level 400 in crafting, the minstrel insignia is account bound. And costs about 8g each. (same for the inscription for the weapons) With crafting leveling (huntsman can do both) it'd be bit over 100 gold just to switch the core stats to minstrel. At the moment I don't have enough ascended vault chests anyway. Next circle I'd have 6 armor chests in total again.
Atm I'm keeping my gold for the griffon unlock.
The ascended stats-choose wvw armor is 2-3 gold each piece +wvw mats and the shards (all time gated). Needs much more time and the exotic pieces have to be unlocked first (via reward track).
If I'd spend as much time in wvw in my last acc as in my first acc, then equipping full ascended is faster and cheaper done via wvw. I guess spvp would be as fast.
That's how it should be, shouldn't? You play what you like and equipment will follow.

Edited March 31 by Lucy.3728

[Sobx.1758]

4 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

Who said that?

Isn't that what you were saying here:

On 3/30/2024 at 2:49 PM, Lucy.3728 said:

And beside Berserker the only other useful stats combination you can use nowadays in end game. The rest is outdated, useful to salvage for the dark balls for legendary stuff.

?
If that wasn't the point you were making there then what it was?

 

4 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

I'm all minstrel exotic, at least armor and weapons.

I'm not struggling with exotic equipment. Why do you make it sound like that?

I don't know what you're talking about here. Where did I say anything about you "struggling with exotic equpment"? What exactly made it sound like that? You said you're "still struggling with ascended minstrel equipment", which is exactly what I quoted and then asked "what are you struggling with exactly?". I don't see what in my post was supposed to be pointing at anything "exotic".
...did you misread "exactly" as "exotic"? 😉 

4 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

My youngest acc is almost 6 months old. I've one berserker ascended armor and weapon set from the vault. Took two vault circles. That's like 4 months?
The runes were the actual expensive stuff.

Ok -and what is supposed to be wrong with it? It's a starter for new players, if you're actively playing the game and are set on getting gear (instead of basically calculating how to get it with the most passive, but slow way you can find), you really should be able to easly get more ascended gear even if literally by crafting it. I suspect you're not really using your alt account like you're using your main, so you're avoiding doing stuff like playing through content you already played through or perhaps even leveling crafting simply because you already did it on your main and want to skip it on the alt. Is this correct?
The runes -and relic- are expensive, true. But not as much if you consider that one wv cycle easly gives you 200+ gold by just targetting limited gold option +MCs +laurels (which does not include daily/weekly completionist chests). Then it suddenly appears you're able to get runes, relic, level up a crafting and you're still probably left with quite a bit on top of that.

4 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

Unfortunately that char isn't meta (anymore). I've no warrior and meta-holo is hard to learn and really difficult to master. I rather go support chrono to be a useful meta-peon.

Ascended gear isn't soulbound, it's account bound, so you can move it between the characters. Also chasing meta is more often than not nothing more than your decision and doing that as a "new player" (or someone who knows they could get it, but won't because they want to do it without investing as much in their secondary account) is a mistake. You don't need to keep remaking meta builds to be effective.

 

4 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

For an ascended minstrel armor I'm lacking grandmaster mark shards. I'll have them at some point, just by playing wvw, but takes a while.

For using the toilet I lack level 400 in crafting, the minstrel insignia is account bound. And costs about 8g each. (same for the inscription for the weapons) With crafting leveling (huntsman can do both) it'd be bit over 100 gold just to switch the core stats to minstrel. At the moment I don't have enough ascended vault chests anyway. Next circle I'd have 6 armor chests in total again.
Atm I'm keeping my gold for the griffon unlock.

So it appears I was correct about you not wanting to level up crafting on alt account? I don't think huntsman can do both (if you mean "both insignia and inscription"?). Even with that, leveling huntsman (400) is about 22-25 gold, while leveling armorsmith (400) is about 16-20 gold. You could rather easly do it, but you don't want to for one reason or another (like trying to do x things at the same time or just not even leveling crafting in the first place).

Edited March 31 by Sobx.1758

[Gehenna.3625]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:04 PM, hellsmachine.4085 said:

All good, we all make mistakes. Back to the original topic, it would be very nice to add all stats to the wizard vault ascended items even if it means that the stats are locked behind the expansions. Condi builds really get punished in this game and it shouldn't be this way. I've got nothing more to say on this matter.

It would be nice. To be fair, it doesn't matter to me either way. I've got all expansions and lots of legendary gear and before that I did a lot of crafting. And if they changed it in a way that made it kinda like the legendary relic works, would be fine by me. 

Though I then think why they would've done it this way in the first place. Is it just a technical matter or is it for some other purpose like I mentioned before.

I was just thinking about how the exotic crafting with those stats used to be account bound and then they changed it so that they could sell it on the TP. I have to think about what would happen if they enabled the WV ascended gear to be able to select those stats. At that point, they'd have to compete with easy access ascended pieces with their exotic craftables. The market would crash and become obsolete in no time. I can see why at least one reason for this decision would be to keep crafting viable.

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 3/28/2024 at 8:33 PM, jason.1083 said:

Because I presume they're trying to gatekeep these stats from F2P people since they too have access to these selection boxes.

Maybe they could work something out so you get selections from them based on the expansions you own or something.

They could add to the Wizard's vault stuff like "HoT ascended change kit", "EoD ascended change kit", etc that could easily be restricted per expansion that would contain various insignias//inscription.

It'd be surely more interesting than crap like transmutation charges or t5 mats.

[hellsmachine.4085]

7 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

It would be nice. To be fair, it doesn't matter to me either way. I've got all expansions and lots of legendary gear and before that I did a lot of crafting. And if they changed it in a way that made it kinda like the legendary relic works, would be fine by me. 

Though I then think why they would've done it this way in the first place. Is it just a technical matter or is it for some other purpose like I mentioned before.

I was just thinking about how the exotic crafting with those stats used to be account bound and then they changed it so that they could sell it on the TP. I have to think about what would happen if they enabled the WV ascended gear to be able to select those stats. At that point, they'd have to compete with easy access ascended pieces with their exotic craftables. The market would crash and become obsolete in no time. I can see why at least one reason for this decision would be to keep crafting viable.

It hasn't really effected the price of exotic celestial gear, which you can get ascended version from the wizard's vault.

Edited April 1 by hellsmachine.4085

[Lucy.3728]

18 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I was just thinking about how the exotic crafting with those stats used to be account bound and then they changed it so that they could sell it on the TP. I have to think about what would happen if they enabled the WV ascended gear to be able to select those stats. At that point, they'd have to compete with easy access ascended pieces with their exotic craftables. The market would crash and become obsolete in no time. I can see why at least one reason for this decision would be to keep crafting viable.

Verdant Brink has been offering stats select exotic armor for map currency (except the chest piece) for years and for some months you get exotic stats select equipment (just everything, even breather) on any wvw map for wvw currency. Hasn't ruined the tp prices. They even went up for many of the dropped exotic pieces, like 70 silver some piece I don't know why it got so expensive, ectos didn't raise that much to explain it.

[Oberon.3965]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:37 AM, Lucy.3728 said:

I get you as many GoBs as you need, if you get me some GoEs ;D

I attempted often enough, with several chars, to run a second world complete. But I always quit after a while 😞 Once is really enough. It's just so boring and dull.
I rather do 100 metas again than one world complete.

I wish Anet would add a trade system like 4 GoBs for 2 GoEs.

Deal! I have 4 GoEs sitting in my bank, and another toon at 85% world completion 🙂

[Lucy.3728]

12 hours ago, Oberon.3965 said:

Deal! I have 4 GoEs sitting in my bank, and another toon at 85% world completion 🙂

Would be awesome if it was possible.

Finished Conflux (leg. wvw ring) a week ago, which needed 5 (!) GoBs  😮😑
Had 2 in my bank thinking I'm safe with them for whatever I'll do next 😆 Took me 2 weeks to get the 3 missing ones and 2 extras, just to be sure for the next project 😏 Getting the 120 missing mystic coins took longer.

And 85%, yeah nice.
I've one with 96%.
Sounds much? It's nothing. It's everything done but almost all hearts (which I won't touch).
From the time spent on world exploration it's like 20% of that is the exploring and 80% the hearts.

[Wolfofdivinity.6251]

On 3/30/2024 at 9:51 AM, Lucy.3728 said:

Then it'd make sense to offer meta stats and not stat combinations that are not used anymore (except for Wupwup and Zoja).

I think it's the f2p player access denial thing.

It's so true too. If it wasn't for Zojja and Wupwup these aren't worth it. I mean sure maybe 1 or 2 others can be used...but certainly not meta. Speaks more to GW2 as a whole than just these chests. Valk used to be viable for guard and guard alone. Carrion before ex packs and dire sort of....that's about it really.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:51 PM, Lucy.3728 said:

Then it'd make sense to offer meta stats and not stat combinations that are not used anymore (except for Wupwup and Zoja).

I think it's the f2p player access denial thing.

If it was f2p access denial thing, they might have simply used the already existing system that limits stat selections offered to the ones available to expansions you purchased. On the other hand, they forgot that system exists when they released EoD, so it would not be surprising if they forgot about it again when making Vault rewards.

[Gehenna.3625]

On 4/1/2024 at 4:44 PM, Lucy.3728 said:

Verdant Brink has been offering stats select exotic armor for map currency (except the chest piece) for years and for some months you get exotic stats select equipment (just everything, even breather) on any wvw map for wvw currency. Hasn't ruined the tp prices.

A lot of people, let's say, aren't fond of HoT maps and the meta there takes a lot of time and effort. The WV is part of the UI and is a lot more visible than an armor set available from a vendor on a HoT map. I bet a lot more people are aware of that one than the exotic one in VB particularly because the vendor doesn't specify they're stat-selectable. And well, the aqua breather as an ascended piece you can get in Bitterfrost Frontier. I didn't even know there was a stat selectable exotic piece lol. Just out of curiosity, where do you get the exotic one?

And when you start in WvW you certainly don't have the currency yet to get this gear. I think that the market is mostly instant gratification based, but as I said, Anet might see it as a concern (a just in case scenario). Now, I realise that I'm just speculating. I don't know any of this but it's something I could imagine as being one of the things Anet wants to take into account.

On 4/1/2024 at 4:44 PM, Lucy.3728 said:

They even went up for many of the dropped exotic pieces, like 70 silver some piece I don't know why it got so expensive, ectos didn't raise that much to explain it.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic? Personally, I do see a considerable surge in prices of ectos since February. Ectos went up around 45% since then but I don't think that has anything to do with some exotics costing 70s each either since there are still exotics that are half that price (and a lot of them). So again, I'm not sure what that has to do with the market for armor crafters. Those sets are around 10g a piece or something.

[Astralporing.1957]

48 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic? Personally, I do see a considerable surge in prices of ectos since February. Ectos went up around 45% since then but I don't think that has anything to do with some exotics costing 70s each either since there are still exotics that are half that price (and a lot of them). So again, I'm not sure what that has to do with the market for armor crafters. Those sets are around 10g a piece or something.

The point was, i believe, that expanding stat selection options on most stat-select gear, as well as adding stat selection to some sets that didn't have it then (both of which happened some time after PoF) didn't seem to impact the TP at all. As such it's quite likely that expanding stat selection options in vault armor/weapons would have similar levels of non-consequence on game economy.

Edited April 3 by Astralporing.1957

[disForm.2837]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:43 PM, Oberon.3965 said:

That's fair.

I feel exactly the same about being forced to play WvW to get Gifts of Battle for my Gen 1 Legendary weapons. I'm sitting on precursors and mats for three of them, and just don't enjoy playing WvW. I've tried and I'd rather not play the game... it's frustrating. 

Have you tried WvW ppt train? Because it's rather similar to Open World. Just run around capturing towers and camps. You may die here and there, but you don't lose anything. Find a proper WvW build and equipment (cheap exotic is mighty fine). Firebrand, Chrono, Spellbreaker are highly recommend for survivability. If you realize your group is being "farmed" by the same enemies, leave map. Avoid EBG like the plague.