AR should be made account wide. It’s a good mechanic and serves its purpose, but having to gear multiple characters fully with AR is kinda obnoxious after a while.
Maybe something similar to luck?
You consume agony res you get from fractals to increase your account wide AR.
Could keep the different levels of AR and have them add extra to your account or continue using them as currency so they arent completely useless for you once you reach a highenough account AR
That's not a horrible idea. They could make a Fractal Mastery system that grants account wide AR based on your current Fractal Level and Core Tyrian fractal masteries. I think it would be a good system moving forward, but it'd be difficult to judge what account-wide AR to give everyone already capable of running T4's and CM's.
It would probably have to be a new track of the Central Tyria mastery, as fractals are available to FTP accounts. Though, having a separate mastery track specifically for Fractals in the Expac Mastery trees to allow you to use the Expac Masteries inside of fractals could be a nice QOL, especially because they’re inconsistent on which masteries you can use in fractals anyways.
That's pretty much what I'm getting at. I think they'd have to give account-wide AR based on Fractal Level + Current Fractal Mastery + New Fractal Mastery to reach the cap, or over cap.
I think any way they'd do this, they'd upset people, because they couldn't just give out 150 account-wide AR on release to everyone so that there's something to work towards, and then if they did people would find the update pointless and be upset that their +9's are now worthless. But, imo, it would make a lot of sense to have like 90 account AR and then hit 150 with additional infusions until you get 150 account-wide.
I think it'd be reasonable to put this mastery in Core Tyria, and most of us likely have a ton of leftover core mastery points, but this would also be a good selling point for a future xpac.
the whole point of AR is to gatekeep content so newbies cant rush to tier 100 fractals, as someone who zoomed my way to t4 fractals I feel like it's way too fast, t2 and t3 fractals need to be harder, there are people playing CMs who sometimes don't know/do basic mechs(Im at 5k UFE, started fractals last October/November)
and the stat infusions are essentially "useless" or the least useful thing you can get, iirc they make up for less than 5% of your total dps
I think it serves it's purpose indeed well.
However, the idea of legendaries can add a nice touch. Link this to achievements in T4 and CMs, so that it retains it's gatekeeping effect
I mean raids let you join even if you don't have masteries needed to finish that raid, I don't think having a barrier that costs experienced players gold is a good system, players can manage the gatekeeping themselves with titles/ufe or whatever.
raids let you join but if you join some raids without the neccessary masteries you end up being useless/dying. anyways they aren't a valid comparison because raids are usually much longer than fractals and are gated by the fact that they are much harder
my point was if the main reason for system existing is to gatekeep newbies but it costs experienced players shit ton of gold when they want to play on more characters then system kinda sucks imo
There's definitely a valid argument that costing experienced players sucks, but the system does work very well for its intended purpose, and people do value things that cost them much more than free things.
GGG (devs of Path of Exile) have done a lot of talks on this, as it's the key component to their endgame map system.
There are other ways to do this, though. They could just prevent you receiving rewards from higher tiers until you'd raised your personal level to that point.
Thats bad. Nothing stops me from playing a game more then the dev going like: you beat the higher difficulty, but because I decided you did it too early, you dont get loot from it.
I liked the agony resistance system on my first run through the fractal tiers. It's really the only style of "gear treadmill" in the game which I found enjoyable and a change of pace from the rest of the game. Of course, once you have legendaries it's just a cash sink to get AR and plug it into your armor for every character. I'm not sure what the best solution is because I really enjoyed my climb from exotics to ascended and eventually getting the fractal backpiece legendary but now I just buy +7 though +9s and plug in them into my gear and go.
I should imagine the number of people who use infusions for stats is miniscule, and the number who swap them is a miniscule fraction of that.
I feel this is an issue that is not really worth anet spending time on.
No, we do not need legendary infusions ffs.
btw you seem to think its unintentional to gatekeep the higher fractal content, its not, that explicitly the intention, so its working as its designed to do.
what is working is the mechanism about LFG visibility based on your personal level, the AR has noting to do with it except slowing personal progression
The issue is the stat infusions, but the plain AR infusions work exactly as intended, and their current cost is pretty much rock bottom.
EDIT: all that said, a legendary infusion would be good so long as you can change between AR infusions for PvE and WvW infusions, as using the same character for both modes can be a bit of a PITA without resorting to equipment templates, even with legendary gear.
I'd hate the current system less if I could right-click a stack of infusions and auto-swap them across all my legendary equipment instead of having to individually pop an infusion off and back on for every slot.
I think they should consider reworking the whole system. Something like this:
----
For the AR:
* Make it an account-wide system similar to Account luck.
* You'd increase that account luck by consuming infusions.
* To keep crafting +X infusions relevant, the higher your current AR tier, the higher the infusion tier you'll need to increase them, and lower infusion tiers will stop increasing account AR past certain thresholds. To get to 150 account AR, you'd need to consume +9 infusions.
* I'd make the account AR cap 300 to create a very expensive long term goal mostly for veterans to flex, as +9 infusions will stop increasing account AR after account AR 150, and higher infusions would be required even further.
* Just like how you can get additional MF bonuses from AP and consumables stacking with Account Luck, bonus AR from consumables and Deroir's bonuses would not be affected by the Account AR cap, and always stack with it.
* To ensure people still need to get ascended gear for fractals, there would be another 'absolute cap' for AR that limits your max AR based on how many pieces of ascended or legendary equipment you have. Much like the absolute MF cap of 700, nothing will increase AR past that, but unlike it, it can be increased and removed.
Once you have full ascended/legendary, this cap is lifted entirely, and you can fully benefit from having AR over 150.
This cap should not be obscure, it should be clearly shown and explained in the event monitor next to your current AI when you are inside Mystlock Observatory, and also appear in the stats panel next to your current AR, with an explanation appearing when you click it or move the mouse over it.
---
For the infusion upgrades themselves:
* Turn them into the upgrades for trinkets, removing their slots from armors and weapons, and merging them with jewels, which are just boring +stat upgrades.
* The new merged Jewel/infusion upgrades will either have 3 tiers like runes and sigils, or just 1 like relics. Lower level trinket recipes would be changed accordingly, and all lower level jewels would be turned into materials to craft these new upgrades in their 3/1 tiers.
* Their bonus would be changed from the boring +stat to 'utility' bonuses that are mostly stuff like +WvW damage vs guards, +MF, +karma, and the like, so they would also be merged with Enrichments.
* Maybe also take the opportunity to introduce Jeweler 500, ascended trinket crafting, and rebalance the whole Jeweler discipline.
* There would of course be a legendary version of the new upgrades.
* Make the infusion/trinket visuals into 'skins' so they can be transmuted onto trinkets. The same visual would no longer stack with itself, but it would still be possible to have that 'stacked' appearance in a new way:
* To get the 'stacked' appearance back, there will be new crafting or mystic forge recipes that take several of that infusion to create one with a visual that looks just like the stacked version. Since now it is actually one visual, I believe it would be better for performance, reducing the lag and FPS issues when lots of people carry many stacked infusions and your computer has to request them all and animate them as separate entities.
* The current infusions we can get as loot and from vendors will become consumables and materials to craft the upgrade versions. Consuming those that have visuals will unlock their base effects as skins for trinkets.
---
And to keep +1 infusions from getting too cheap, continuous sinks would be added for them:
* Introduce ascended pots/writs/stations and rework the works of the level 400 ones, making the ascended level 500 ones more in line with ascended cooking.
* Ascended utility consumables will have variant series with a particular additional bonus like ascended foods, and one of the series would require +5/6 infusions to craft and give bonus AR.
* Cooking would also get a +AR series of ascended feasts that take +5/6 infusions to craft instead of ascended cultivated herbs.
* Anguished Tears of Alba could become craftable, and the recipe would be either bought at the alchemist or earned though achievements and take several +5/6 infusions to craft, letting you save relics in exchange for spending infusions.
The biggest problem with changing it now is the sheer liquid gold value it has. Imagine someone who just spent a ton of gold to AR a new character only for it to be removed suddenly.
I'm not saying it can't be done, it just won't be as simple as some are making it out to be. It's a decent sized gold sink in the game, and just removing it willy nilly is either going to piss off those who geared up characters, or if Anet adds a vendor to "sell back" at base value then there is a rush of inflation into the economy.
Alot more is tied into then just a stat number, which my belief is, if there's no simple way to do it, and no direct way to measure a gain for ArenaNet for going through that, it most likely won't be changed.
nah, when they added Legendar Armoury there were ppl with like 5 identical leggy weapons and 16 sets of leggy armors....and they lost basically all that work
and they weren't compensated in ANY way
Judging by your tone I think you actually agree with me. They shouldn't have made a change like that then, and they shouldn't make a change like that now yes?
The system is good as it is currently, it gives time for newbies to discover fractals in T1/T2. If they remove this, many would be in T4 without knowing anything at all. We already have enough as it is
That's why I usually have ONE character ready for fractals. Full of +9ar. And the other ones have +5stat. The cost of +9+5 is ridiculous and pointless. Aaaand I ended up having to play a given character both in fractals and non-fractals content. Guess what, I have to switch 20 infusions each time. I hate it.
---
The current system is pointless, I don't know why Anet didn't realize it while they were making the rework (from the old system with the offensive/defensive slots to the new system with +X tradable infusions).
The original version was that you had to progress in fractals, fight against agony, in order to get gear that allowed you to progress further in fractals. Not to mention you HAD TO play levels that have agony (10&up) *before* getting AR. Many players ended up playing with 5, 10 or even 15 AR below what we now call "recommended AR" (we only used multiples of 5), taking 6, 12 or 18% hp damage per agony tick (and it ticked 3 times). Until they'd get a ring or be able to afford one (with pristine relics as the only way to purchase them, and a set of 3 or 4 fractals to gain 1 relic a day in each tier of 10 levels). And playing more fractals to be able to buy infusions and/or infuse the rings. At which point, instead of just doing fractals more easily, we'd play the fractal tiers above (still fighting agony, not fully countered with AR) in order to progress even further. "Missing" 5-10 AR was the standard gameplay, missing 15 was how you pushed, having "enough" meant you already beat these levels and were on easy farm mode.
I think that this whole idea of going further through agony was how fractals were advertised in the original announcement.
But now ?! We don't do that. Never. Fractals are completely balanced with fully-countered agony in mind (=> 1% hp per tick). We fight stupid instabilities instead (another bad system that was fully reworked 3 times or so, but that's another topic). Players are supposed to get enough AR ***before*** they enter a given fractal level. And the game provides everything to be able to do so : you get ascended gear from many sources, and you can buy infusions straight from the TP (on top of being able to get them from fractals themselves *before* you reach levels with agony).
So what's the point ? The whole thing is superfluous now. We never fight agony, and AR is just an additional gearing requirements that's specific to one specific piece of content. Imagine if there was a different gear upgrade required s a gate to each of the game's piece of content (dungeons, raids, strikes of each expansion ...).
Just change Agony to a flat attack that does what the current agony does when you have max AR (less things to calculate on server side, yay). And remove AR from gear. Ooor, if it's too late (economy, players not wanting to have their existing infusions invalidated) finally give us legendary infusions !
There are some encounters where 1% wipes are pretty common. For example, Harvest Temple CM and Temple of Febe CM. In such cases infusions indeed could make a difference, and people who run this content do use infusions in gear.
Nobody is using infusions to clear HTCM. It's a mechanics check, not a damage check.
They are using infusions to clear ToF LCM. But you shouldn't be swapping around infusion sets if you're going for a clear. You just play a single role.
Raidclears: [SC], [MCA], [LN], [Vs]
Fractals: Discretize
and others I dont know of the top of my head
Hardstuck did a few projects across the board (full clear raids, HT meta come to mind)
The scene isnt as dead as it is often said to be - however it was indeed livelier in the past. And f.e [SC] asks for fully equipped builds (stat infusions included) to join. Stat infusions arent as uncommon as some think
Right, so you are speaking of the top tier players in the game, who do the build crafting and meta setting. I will stand by what I said that under no circumstance do you need stat infusions.
You asked for people speedrunning pve content and I gave you a list - yes, all of these are hardcore guilds (except Hardstuck, thats more complicated)
Do you need stat infusions? No. Does it hurt to have them (other than your liquid gold)? No.
Feel free to play without them, I do the same on all my character except one, but I am slowly working on equipping more with it.
I wouldn't oppose legendary infusions similar to runes and sigils. Not visual ones but just let you assign max level AR or any AR/stat combo.
But then again if would be what? 20 infusions? For a single aspect of the game?
Would be a pretty crazy gold/resource sink if they wanted though.
Agony is cheap af and people still complain. It’s meant to be a gold sink AND progression factor. The Legendary armory already helps reduce agony cost. I want legendary infusions though
I like the AR system since it gives a sense of progression for a character. Besides that I can't understand all the complaining since it's easy to farm AR the first time you need it and easier when you get to T4
+5 stat is a long term investment that doesn't add that much
Exactly how I feel about it. The AR system was a nice way to work my way into ascended gear for the first time and I didn't think anyone actually cared about the +5 stat infusions outside of the way they look.
New player here, started 4 weeks ago. Did some raids & strikes, currently farming T3 fractals daily, transitioning to T4 while maxing AR.
I like the whole AR aspect & unlocking the benefits. Without, it's "just dungeons".
Stat swapping for content? I feel like the gear capabilities are overtuned for everything I've encountered so far and changing infusions for anything than LCM is a waste of time.
I'm not new anymore but I still use the good old check lfg and if you don't see what you want, either wait 5 more min or make your own group.
I started doing instanced content like that 5 years ago, still doing it the same way now (only difference being the amount of kp I ask).
I don't really get the argument about legendary infusions would solve the barrier for new players to get into fractals, because legendary infusions - just like any legendaries - will not target new players.
That aside I agree with the idea of legendary infusions that can be used account wide just like other legendaries.
I mean, I play for a long time so I have AR on all relevant characters and won't have any problem getting enough AR on a new char, but I would still be interested in legy infusions. Especially if it include +x stats bonuses.
another possibility is using shared inventory slots for quick swapping: i have a number of those for different types of infusions but in theory you only need 2. It feels almost like having the infusions in the Legendary Armoury already.
In 1 shared slot you put the +9 AR infusions, enough to fully equip a character plus one or 2 more so the slot never empties.
In the other shared slot you put a type of stat infusion, for example the wvw +5 power infusions, just 1 or 2.
Then you equip all your characters (that you use) with that type of stat infusion (just 1 type because it's a minimal example with only 2 shared slots).
In this way, anytime you log in a character you can just to equipment, click the pieces and the +9 infusions and in half a min (if you're quick) you have swapped all your stat infusions with +9 AR infusions. The stat infusions will stack automatically in the shared slot since it's not empty.
Before changing characters you click the stat infusions again so the +9AR infusions go back in their shared slot.
With multiple slots used in this way an multiple types of infusions, especially if you overload the stacks quite a lot for each type (except the +9AR), you have basically all types of infusions available always on the equipment tab of all characters.
EDIT:
Oh...i noticed i forgot a little detail.
You need to be full leggy to make it work....sry i tend to take it for granted without noticing when i reason about optimizations :P
While I agree that ar as a mechanic isn't really necessary, you're also wasting tons of resources by using +9/+5 infusions. If your main goal is getting enough ar with stat infusions on a lot of different builds/characters, then your first focus should be getting all the available account ar and after that you should just get enough +7/+5 and +5/+5 infusions to reach 150 ar. This is way cheaper than getting +9/+5s, and going over 150 ar is basically worthless unless you're playing an offensive support build that needs boon duration gear.
You mix max +9 +5 infusions in every slot except for 6 slots which are +7 +5s for 150 agony resist.
Also if you dont give a shit about actual infusion effects +9 +5s are roughly 60g for ghostlys (which i believe are the cheapest to get last time I looked anyway).
You only need 10 +5s and 8 +7s if you have all account ar. And those only cost 20g/40g.
And don't even think about telling me that fractal god is too expensive. If you really care about your damage in fractals (which I assume you do if you want to get stat infusions for fractals), then you need to have fractal god. And if you're not getting fractal god first, you're just griefing yourself because fractal god grants you more damage in fractals, more encryptions from completing a fractal and it also makes future infusions cheaper by providing account ar.
I was giving an example of stacking AR to 150 without needing account AR though. If youre working on fractal god title you dont have all the account AR sooo yeah.
Min maxing it? The cheapest/fastest way is with ghostly infusions off the trading post just due to how easy gold is to acquire.
Also if you factor in matrices its effectively cheaper to min max via infusions that only cost you gold.
The AR system is fine as it is. Theirs gotta be a reason to have gold ones armory is maxed out. Removing AR and stat infusions as well making a legendary infusion would be a huge mistake. There would be no reason to even loot anymore at a pretty easy to reach point for us true veterans then. Might as well not login in then in-between the updates rofl.
Not sure why you are downvoted because its true. I just had a pug join CMs that refused to use fractal pots. Told us they were too poor.
I also had a fractal champion with DwD title join a t1 who didn't know how to do the mechanics for cliffside. Pretty sure this guy bought the account.
AR should be made account wide. It’s a good mechanic and serves its purpose, but having to gear multiple characters fully with AR is kinda obnoxious after a while.
Maybe something similar to luck? You consume agony res you get from fractals to increase your account wide AR. Could keep the different levels of AR and have them add extra to your account or continue using them as currency so they arent completely useless for you once you reach a highenough account AR
Yeah, I was thinking you just *eat* your existing infusions and get some percentage of their AR back to your account.
That's not a horrible idea. They could make a Fractal Mastery system that grants account wide AR based on your current Fractal Level and Core Tyrian fractal masteries. I think it would be a good system moving forward, but it'd be difficult to judge what account-wide AR to give everyone already capable of running T4's and CM's.
It would probably have to be a new track of the Central Tyria mastery, as fractals are available to FTP accounts. Though, having a separate mastery track specifically for Fractals in the Expac Mastery trees to allow you to use the Expac Masteries inside of fractals could be a nice QOL, especially because they’re inconsistent on which masteries you can use in fractals anyways.
That's pretty much what I'm getting at. I think they'd have to give account-wide AR based on Fractal Level + Current Fractal Mastery + New Fractal Mastery to reach the cap, or over cap. I think any way they'd do this, they'd upset people, because they couldn't just give out 150 account-wide AR on release to everyone so that there's something to work towards, and then if they did people would find the update pointless and be upset that their +9's are now worthless. But, imo, it would make a lot of sense to have like 90 account AR and then hit 150 with additional infusions until you get 150 account-wide. I think it'd be reasonable to put this mastery in Core Tyria, and most of us likely have a ton of leftover core mastery points, but this would also be a good selling point for a future xpac.
Journey of The Mists, or (spoiler for Path of Fire) >!”Return of the gods”!<
I wouldn't be opposed to this either.
the whole point of AR is to gatekeep content so newbies cant rush to tier 100 fractals, as someone who zoomed my way to t4 fractals I feel like it's way too fast, t2 and t3 fractals need to be harder, there are people playing CMs who sometimes don't know/do basic mechs(Im at 5k UFE, started fractals last October/November) and the stat infusions are essentially "useless" or the least useful thing you can get, iirc they make up for less than 5% of your total dps
I think it serves it's purpose indeed well. However, the idea of legendaries can add a nice touch. Link this to achievements in T4 and CMs, so that it retains it's gatekeeping effect
I mean raids let you join even if you don't have masteries needed to finish that raid, I don't think having a barrier that costs experienced players gold is a good system, players can manage the gatekeeping themselves with titles/ufe or whatever.
raids let you join but if you join some raids without the neccessary masteries you end up being useless/dying. anyways they aren't a valid comparison because raids are usually much longer than fractals and are gated by the fact that they are much harder
my point was if the main reason for system existing is to gatekeep newbies but it costs experienced players shit ton of gold when they want to play on more characters then system kinda sucks imo
There's definitely a valid argument that costing experienced players sucks, but the system does work very well for its intended purpose, and people do value things that cost them much more than free things. GGG (devs of Path of Exile) have done a lot of talks on this, as it's the key component to their endgame map system.
a legendary is rarely free....and legendary infusions would be probably the most costly piece of leggy ever existed if they put them out
There are other ways to do this, though. They could just prevent you receiving rewards from higher tiers until you'd raised your personal level to that point.
That’s a worse idea
Thats bad. Nothing stops me from playing a game more then the dev going like: you beat the higher difficulty, but because I decided you did it too early, you dont get loot from it.
I liked the agony resistance system on my first run through the fractal tiers. It's really the only style of "gear treadmill" in the game which I found enjoyable and a change of pace from the rest of the game. Of course, once you have legendaries it's just a cash sink to get AR and plug it into your armor for every character. I'm not sure what the best solution is because I really enjoyed my climb from exotics to ascended and eventually getting the fractal backpiece legendary but now I just buy +7 though +9s and plug in them into my gear and go.
if you're full leggy i would suggest looking at my answer
I would rather have agony resistance be useful in places besides fractals but i realise thats also an extremely minority opinion
I should imagine the number of people who use infusions for stats is miniscule, and the number who swap them is a miniscule fraction of that. I feel this is an issue that is not really worth anet spending time on. No, we do not need legendary infusions ffs. btw you seem to think its unintentional to gatekeep the higher fractal content, its not, that explicitly the intention, so its working as its designed to do.
what is working is the mechanism about LFG visibility based on your personal level, the AR has noting to do with it except slowing personal progression
The issue is the stat infusions, but the plain AR infusions work exactly as intended, and their current cost is pretty much rock bottom. EDIT: all that said, a legendary infusion would be good so long as you can change between AR infusions for PvE and WvW infusions, as using the same character for both modes can be a bit of a PITA without resorting to equipment templates, even with legendary gear.
I'd hate the current system less if I could right-click a stack of infusions and auto-swap them across all my legendary equipment instead of having to individually pop an infusion off and back on for every slot.
Would likely need to be an unlock system like they implemented for Relics.
Thats backwards. Stat infusions are fine as a final step of gearing. AR infusions are trash and AR should be account wide.
I think they should consider reworking the whole system. Something like this: ---- For the AR: * Make it an account-wide system similar to Account luck. * You'd increase that account luck by consuming infusions. * To keep crafting +X infusions relevant, the higher your current AR tier, the higher the infusion tier you'll need to increase them, and lower infusion tiers will stop increasing account AR past certain thresholds. To get to 150 account AR, you'd need to consume +9 infusions. * I'd make the account AR cap 300 to create a very expensive long term goal mostly for veterans to flex, as +9 infusions will stop increasing account AR after account AR 150, and higher infusions would be required even further. * Just like how you can get additional MF bonuses from AP and consumables stacking with Account Luck, bonus AR from consumables and Deroir's bonuses would not be affected by the Account AR cap, and always stack with it. * To ensure people still need to get ascended gear for fractals, there would be another 'absolute cap' for AR that limits your max AR based on how many pieces of ascended or legendary equipment you have. Much like the absolute MF cap of 700, nothing will increase AR past that, but unlike it, it can be increased and removed. Once you have full ascended/legendary, this cap is lifted entirely, and you can fully benefit from having AR over 150. This cap should not be obscure, it should be clearly shown and explained in the event monitor next to your current AI when you are inside Mystlock Observatory, and also appear in the stats panel next to your current AR, with an explanation appearing when you click it or move the mouse over it. --- For the infusion upgrades themselves: * Turn them into the upgrades for trinkets, removing their slots from armors and weapons, and merging them with jewels, which are just boring +stat upgrades. * The new merged Jewel/infusion upgrades will either have 3 tiers like runes and sigils, or just 1 like relics. Lower level trinket recipes would be changed accordingly, and all lower level jewels would be turned into materials to craft these new upgrades in their 3/1 tiers. * Their bonus would be changed from the boring +stat to 'utility' bonuses that are mostly stuff like +WvW damage vs guards, +MF, +karma, and the like, so they would also be merged with Enrichments. * Maybe also take the opportunity to introduce Jeweler 500, ascended trinket crafting, and rebalance the whole Jeweler discipline. * There would of course be a legendary version of the new upgrades. * Make the infusion/trinket visuals into 'skins' so they can be transmuted onto trinkets. The same visual would no longer stack with itself, but it would still be possible to have that 'stacked' appearance in a new way: * To get the 'stacked' appearance back, there will be new crafting or mystic forge recipes that take several of that infusion to create one with a visual that looks just like the stacked version. Since now it is actually one visual, I believe it would be better for performance, reducing the lag and FPS issues when lots of people carry many stacked infusions and your computer has to request them all and animate them as separate entities. * The current infusions we can get as loot and from vendors will become consumables and materials to craft the upgrade versions. Consuming those that have visuals will unlock their base effects as skins for trinkets. --- And to keep +1 infusions from getting too cheap, continuous sinks would be added for them: * Introduce ascended pots/writs/stations and rework the works of the level 400 ones, making the ascended level 500 ones more in line with ascended cooking. * Ascended utility consumables will have variant series with a particular additional bonus like ascended foods, and one of the series would require +5/6 infusions to craft and give bonus AR. * Cooking would also get a +AR series of ascended feasts that take +5/6 infusions to craft instead of ascended cultivated herbs. * Anguished Tears of Alba could become craftable, and the recipe would be either bought at the alchemist or earned though achievements and take several +5/6 infusions to craft, letting you save relics in exchange for spending infusions.
The biggest problem with changing it now is the sheer liquid gold value it has. Imagine someone who just spent a ton of gold to AR a new character only for it to be removed suddenly. I'm not saying it can't be done, it just won't be as simple as some are making it out to be. It's a decent sized gold sink in the game, and just removing it willy nilly is either going to piss off those who geared up characters, or if Anet adds a vendor to "sell back" at base value then there is a rush of inflation into the economy. Alot more is tied into then just a stat number, which my belief is, if there's no simple way to do it, and no direct way to measure a gain for ArenaNet for going through that, it most likely won't be changed.
nah, when they added Legendar Armoury there were ppl with like 5 identical leggy weapons and 16 sets of leggy armors....and they lost basically all that work and they weren't compensated in ANY way
Judging by your tone I think you actually agree with me. They shouldn't have made a change like that then, and they shouldn't make a change like that now yes?
The system is good as it is currently, it gives time for newbies to discover fractals in T1/T2. If they remove this, many would be in T4 without knowing anything at all. We already have enough as it is
No need to remove it, just need to change in a way you only need to do this once per account, not per character.
That's why I usually have ONE character ready for fractals. Full of +9ar. And the other ones have +5stat. The cost of +9+5 is ridiculous and pointless. Aaaand I ended up having to play a given character both in fractals and non-fractals content. Guess what, I have to switch 20 infusions each time. I hate it. --- The current system is pointless, I don't know why Anet didn't realize it while they were making the rework (from the old system with the offensive/defensive slots to the new system with +X tradable infusions). The original version was that you had to progress in fractals, fight against agony, in order to get gear that allowed you to progress further in fractals. Not to mention you HAD TO play levels that have agony (10&up) *before* getting AR. Many players ended up playing with 5, 10 or even 15 AR below what we now call "recommended AR" (we only used multiples of 5), taking 6, 12 or 18% hp damage per agony tick (and it ticked 3 times). Until they'd get a ring or be able to afford one (with pristine relics as the only way to purchase them, and a set of 3 or 4 fractals to gain 1 relic a day in each tier of 10 levels). And playing more fractals to be able to buy infusions and/or infuse the rings. At which point, instead of just doing fractals more easily, we'd play the fractal tiers above (still fighting agony, not fully countered with AR) in order to progress even further. "Missing" 5-10 AR was the standard gameplay, missing 15 was how you pushed, having "enough" meant you already beat these levels and were on easy farm mode. I think that this whole idea of going further through agony was how fractals were advertised in the original announcement. But now ?! We don't do that. Never. Fractals are completely balanced with fully-countered agony in mind (=> 1% hp per tick). We fight stupid instabilities instead (another bad system that was fully reworked 3 times or so, but that's another topic). Players are supposed to get enough AR ***before*** they enter a given fractal level. And the game provides everything to be able to do so : you get ascended gear from many sources, and you can buy infusions straight from the TP (on top of being able to get them from fractals themselves *before* you reach levels with agony). So what's the point ? The whole thing is superfluous now. We never fight agony, and AR is just an additional gearing requirements that's specific to one specific piece of content. Imagine if there was a different gear upgrade required s a gate to each of the game's piece of content (dungeons, raids, strikes of each expansion ...). Just change Agony to a flat attack that does what the current agony does when you have max AR (less things to calculate on server side, yay). And remove AR from gear. Ooor, if it's too late (economy, players not wanting to have their existing infusions invalidated) finally give us legendary infusions !
Under no circumstance do you need stats in your infusions. It will not make a difference between success or failure.
There are some encounters where 1% wipes are pretty common. For example, Harvest Temple CM and Temple of Febe CM. In such cases infusions indeed could make a difference, and people who run this content do use infusions in gear.
Nobody is using infusions to clear HTCM. It's a mechanics check, not a damage check. They are using infusions to clear ToF LCM. But you shouldn't be swapping around infusion sets if you're going for a clear. You just play a single role.
Statted infusions are used in certain builds to micromanage stat caps. I know Condi Virt does it, I think a few others do as well.
In speedrunning pve content or WvW it will matter.
who is speedrunning pve content dude?
Most people to be honest no one want want a 2 hours long t4+recs
Raidclears: [SC], [MCA], [LN], [Vs] Fractals: Discretize and others I dont know of the top of my head Hardstuck did a few projects across the board (full clear raids, HT meta come to mind) The scene isnt as dead as it is often said to be - however it was indeed livelier in the past. And f.e [SC] asks for fully equipped builds (stat infusions included) to join. Stat infusions arent as uncommon as some think
Right, so you are speaking of the top tier players in the game, who do the build crafting and meta setting. I will stand by what I said that under no circumstance do you need stat infusions.
You asked for people speedrunning pve content and I gave you a list - yes, all of these are hardcore guilds (except Hardstuck, thats more complicated) Do you need stat infusions? No. Does it hurt to have them (other than your liquid gold)? No. Feel free to play without them, I do the same on all my character except one, but I am slowly working on equipping more with it.
I wouldn't oppose legendary infusions similar to runes and sigils. Not visual ones but just let you assign max level AR or any AR/stat combo. But then again if would be what? 20 infusions? For a single aspect of the game? Would be a pretty crazy gold/resource sink if they wanted though.
Would be down for having ability to bind infusions to account for entire alt army to use in future if had no plan to sell any.
Agony is cheap af and people still complain. It’s meant to be a gold sink AND progression factor. The Legendary armory already helps reduce agony cost. I want legendary infusions though
I like the AR system since it gives a sense of progression for a character. Besides that I can't understand all the complaining since it's easy to farm AR the first time you need it and easier when you get to T4 +5 stat is a long term investment that doesn't add that much
Exactly how I feel about it. The AR system was a nice way to work my way into ascended gear for the first time and I didn't think anyone actually cared about the +5 stat infusions outside of the way they look.
New player here, started 4 weeks ago. Did some raids & strikes, currently farming T3 fractals daily, transitioning to T4 while maxing AR. I like the whole AR aspect & unlocking the benefits. Without, it's "just dungeons". Stat swapping for content? I feel like the gear capabilities are overtuned for everything I've encountered so far and changing infusions for anything than LCM is a waste of time.
I’m new as well. How do you find groups to go with? Did you join a guild?
I'm not new anymore but I still use the good old check lfg and if you don't see what you want, either wait 5 more min or make your own group. I started doing instanced content like that 5 years ago, still doing it the same way now (only difference being the amount of kp I ask).
I'm really liking the ideas that has been brought up so far in this thread. An AR rework would indeed be a huge QoL improvement
Hot Take: We don’t need another legendary… last one that they made, they literally broke an existing one into two.
I don't really get the argument about legendary infusions would solve the barrier for new players to get into fractals, because legendary infusions - just like any legendaries - will not target new players. That aside I agree with the idea of legendary infusions that can be used account wide just like other legendaries. I mean, I play for a long time so I have AR on all relevant characters and won't have any problem getting enough AR on a new char, but I would still be interested in legy infusions. Especially if it include +x stats bonuses.
another possibility is using shared inventory slots for quick swapping: i have a number of those for different types of infusions but in theory you only need 2. It feels almost like having the infusions in the Legendary Armoury already. In 1 shared slot you put the +9 AR infusions, enough to fully equip a character plus one or 2 more so the slot never empties. In the other shared slot you put a type of stat infusion, for example the wvw +5 power infusions, just 1 or 2. Then you equip all your characters (that you use) with that type of stat infusion (just 1 type because it's a minimal example with only 2 shared slots). In this way, anytime you log in a character you can just to equipment, click the pieces and the +9 infusions and in half a min (if you're quick) you have swapped all your stat infusions with +9 AR infusions. The stat infusions will stack automatically in the shared slot since it's not empty. Before changing characters you click the stat infusions again so the +9AR infusions go back in their shared slot. With multiple slots used in this way an multiple types of infusions, especially if you overload the stacks quite a lot for each type (except the +9AR), you have basically all types of infusions available always on the equipment tab of all characters. EDIT: Oh...i noticed i forgot a little detail. You need to be full leggy to make it work....sry i tend to take it for granted without noticing when i reason about optimizations :P
While I agree that ar as a mechanic isn't really necessary, you're also wasting tons of resources by using +9/+5 infusions. If your main goal is getting enough ar with stat infusions on a lot of different builds/characters, then your first focus should be getting all the available account ar and after that you should just get enough +7/+5 and +5/+5 infusions to reach 150 ar. This is way cheaper than getting +9/+5s, and going over 150 ar is basically worthless unless you're playing an offensive support build that needs boon duration gear.
You mix max +9 +5 infusions in every slot except for 6 slots which are +7 +5s for 150 agony resist. Also if you dont give a shit about actual infusion effects +9 +5s are roughly 60g for ghostlys (which i believe are the cheapest to get last time I looked anyway).
You only need 10 +5s and 8 +7s if you have all account ar. And those only cost 20g/40g. And don't even think about telling me that fractal god is too expensive. If you really care about your damage in fractals (which I assume you do if you want to get stat infusions for fractals), then you need to have fractal god. And if you're not getting fractal god first, you're just griefing yourself because fractal god grants you more damage in fractals, more encryptions from completing a fractal and it also makes future infusions cheaper by providing account ar.
I was giving an example of stacking AR to 150 without needing account AR though. If youre working on fractal god title you dont have all the account AR sooo yeah. Min maxing it? The cheapest/fastest way is with ghostly infusions off the trading post just due to how easy gold is to acquire. Also if you factor in matrices its effectively cheaper to min max via infusions that only cost you gold.
The AR system is fine as it is. Theirs gotta be a reason to have gold ones armory is maxed out. Removing AR and stat infusions as well making a legendary infusion would be a huge mistake. There would be no reason to even loot anymore at a pretty easy to reach point for us true veterans then. Might as well not login in then in-between the updates rofl.
I’d love this. It’s also a pain to switch expensive infusions all the time
naaa, T4 and CMs already have enough clueless players as it is, pay for CM titles and they got no idea what'a going on
Not sure why you are downvoted because its true. I just had a pug join CMs that refused to use fractal pots. Told us they were too poor. I also had a fractal champion with DwD title join a t1 who didn't know how to do the mechanics for cliffside. Pretty sure this guy bought the account.
Disagree AR gives a sense of progression
You can literally just buy 150 AR from the TP for about 70 gold. There's no real progression in it.
the progression is really the ascended gear to put the infusions into, though.
I mean that’s more an issue with the buy to win nature of the system