Ascension Spell Quality Progression

Right, you cannot say it often enough. It is always a very personal decision at what point "pay to win" starts. In the past we have never seen any fabled amor or weapons in the market place. Ok, you could speed up your research of masterspell with real cash, but masters were tradeble items. You had always the choise, go in a raid and loot it, earn platin and buy it or research it with or without real money. This speed up was from my point of view not pay to win. I used it a lot, because I am not a raider and my time to play is very limited. I bought the premium preorder. It includes a very nice mount with strong stats, a very well working merc and fabled merc-amor. For a purist this may smell already like ptw, but not for me. In the new addon you find soon a similare pet, mercgear is also awailable. The preorder makes life easier for casual gamer with bad gear, but the advantage is small. On the long run there is no advantage at all. Everybody can buy kronos and sell them ingame. In this way you can transfer 18 $ in 300.000 platin. This is an advantage, but you can earn the same amount of plat or even much more just by playing. To be hounest i did it several times, without a bad feeling. I simply prefer the fast way and I have not the time to earn money ingame. For me it is not a problem to spend money for a game what I like, as long as I do not destroy the balance in the game. 18 $ is no big thing for me and it is my free decision!

The big difference now is, many people have the feeling, we are obliged to buy the masters for real money, and the price is high. DB advertised with the high impact of new spells. To have important spells on masterlevel was always important for success ingame. At least the raider will reach a point were he needs it sooner or later. (And dont forget master is not the highest level. I just want to remember the 10 million plat for ancient.)

I am a very casual gamer, but nevertheless I wish to improve my toon. That is the basis of the game! I decided already I will develop only the geomancer. For me it should be enough. How many journeyman or expert I find on the broker? Between 0 and 1? Even if I would find a friend who is crafting for me the spells, the research of adept and master will take around two months for each spell or 20 months for 10 spells. Ok, let us think positive, I will improve only half of all spells, because maybe I do not need all of them. This leads in 10 months waiting, if I find someone crafting the journeyman and expert, and this IF is an extremly big one.

Ok, ok, the positive thinker would say, to get fully mastered took in the past a similare time. Yes he is right, but this 10 months are not for a fully mastered. It is the minimum thinking of a casual player. To have 5 masters is far away from the maximum to have 40 ancient.

Lets think in the worst case direction:
1. step - Well money doesnt matter! I send the young son of a friend daily to KA, with the job to farm 1 million ex. After 3 months I have all 10 geomancer on lowest lvl.
2. step - I spend 49.000 DBcash (490 US$) to improve all of them to master.
3. step - I am in the moment not sure how to get the grandmaster, but I know I need the master a second time. Masters dont drop. In consequence it must be possible to buy them again. Positive thinking, it will cost less than the first master. To improve all only one level cost maybe 10.000 DBcash (100 US$).
4. step - I buy 250 to 300 kronos and sell them ingame (5000 US$). With this platin I buy all the ancient, becaue we know already only the ancient have a lot of extras like very high potency or fevor.
5. step - I join a raidforce, prefered not the very best one, I want to be great, not only the newby. After the first raid I explain the people: "Sorry boys and girls, but I cannot continue. You are not good enough for me!"
6. step - Yeah, yeah, victory, I am the greatest! For only 5590 $ I killed the whole game!

You do not believe so? I do! Maybe people will not spent 5590 $, but for sure we will see some who spent at least a part of it, just to feel great. The most expensive step is to get the ancients, but for the masters I need only something around 500 $. That sounds possible.
Again ok, we can say it will be only for a certain time. In 2 years it will be an old story, but how many of us will be still in the game in 2 years? How many raidforces will die, because some gamer accept to pay real money and others not?

Dear Daybreak, please rip money from those who like cosmetic items, potions to level their alts etc.. Stop ripping the endgame raiding community by doing s*** like this. How ridiculous Milchbarts post looks, describes how ridiculous these PAY TO WIN actions are.

I always get the feeling from these posts that what people really care about is someone else being better than them, someone else getting something before them. There will always be someone better than you in this game, it does not matter.

Is that what you say on every post that is pay to win related? You want to find out who is better? Name your main character and we will see. You caused my thread to get closed with your trolling bs, get suspended please.

I don't care if you can pay or not to get the spell. whatever. I just want it to be droppable in game as well. then I have options as to how I acquire it. I have had two illegible scrolls drop. both are on the broker and both are for levels of ascension that are a longways off atm.

Having Adept and Master lvls as research only is unacceptable.
This game is starting down the RIFT path, and that's not a good slope to be on.

You can not lvl to lvl 5 now is there a reason for this? I know of 3 peeps that are at lvl 5 and they say comeback later.

Feldon has a good write-up about Ascension stuff; in it he noted that the devs have a hard cap in place until 13 December.

@Dithmir
The complete raid timeline from beginning till today based on a constant improvement of your toon. You cannot go in a raidinstance with gear and spells of the last expansion. Thats simply impossible. It is not the question to be the best. The question is what happens if some player in a raidforce buy the new spells and others not. The raid would not work, because the power of the different toons is too different. I thought my post is easy to understand, but obviously it is not for everybody.

@Ellimist and Xellium

That is just the point. It is no problem if you can chose to buy an improvement or get it just by playing. The problem is you are oblieged to buy it, if you dont want to wait for years.

I upgraded the first spell to expert (with some free dbc i had left) and the damage of that one spell went up yes .. but tbh it feels i do more dps when i don't cast em.
3 sec casting time is damm long for a enchanter .. and i'm ain't looking forward to use em on my tanks tbh.

And no clue or hint when you could/would trigger an ascension combo either

Yes I made yesterday the same expirience. This point is something new in our discussion. I got Stone Hammer, the second spell for geomancer. It is a pur damagespell. Ok, shame on me, I contradict myself now. Forgive me my action, but I was simply curious and I had in mind maybe we are wrong in all this discussion about p2w.

In short words I bought the master for nonsensical 45 US$. It makes indeed much more damage than everything what I had before, but the castingtime is close to 7 sec. I am a Paladin and I have a lot of normal damagespells with a castingtime of 1 sec or lower. In 7 sec I can cast 7 or 8 normal spells, with rather similare total damage. I have no parser, but I believe my dps in total was not increasing or only a little bit.

1. question: For what we need the Ascension spells?
2. question: Who really needs them?
3. How big is the influence of Ascension spells and is it a "Need" to have them on a high lvl?

In real life I am sometimes joking, in my next life I will become a guru instead of chemist. Life is easier, more money, nice girls and not too much to work. I try to justify my new job now and make a prophecy:

"Within some months, some endgame raider will have a problem. They will stand in front of an endboss with so much protection that normal spells dont harm him!"

1. answer: For endgame raiding
2. answer: Endgame raider and people who want to be "better".
3. answer: Yes and no, yes you will need them soon on high lvl if you are a hardcore raider, no you can wait if you are a casual.

Conclusion: It is still a kind of p2w for raiders, but personally I will wait and see. I do not need them urgently.

p.s. My wife was angry about my stupid action. In the future I have to be more discreet with such experiments.

wow, i did not realize the casting time increased with level of the spell. honestly, that just confirms that ascension is terrible. Rather than getting a cool new 'on delivery' spell like prestige spells, we get a sorta kinda decent spell on delivery that takes forever to cast and probably hurts your parse by using it, then upgrade over a LONG time or a decent chunk of money just to see it cast for 7 seconds, during which time you can not cast other things. wow. i'm having so much fun.

and the worse part is, because it was something many people have paid for already, we will not see a change other than perhaps more drops of the craftable things.

Im going to ask the obvious question here, but is your casting speed at or above 100? I have upgraded some of my spells, one of which is a Geo spell, and I can tell you, the spell casting times Do NOT increase.

Id just hate for any misinformation to be spread.

Also you dont have ACT and you are making statements as to how hard these abilities hit? Seriously? You cant eyeball this.

Research was always an alternative to spell upgrades, not a replacement for the system. All progression should be obtainable in game through regular play. Tiers of research only is bad, lazy, and greedy design.

@Nero
My casing speed is 272. Maybe I misunderstood something, but in the moment I have the feeling you didnt read my post correctly. Stone Hammer hits very hard, but the casting time is very long and it takes several minutes to use it a second time. Please explain me how this can have a significant influence to dps?

Folks can someone enlight me in basics
Are any way except for research to get to next level of spell quality?
Are any consensus what way is better? (pro - cons)

Your question is the reason for all the discussion in this thread.

To summerize what we know today:
In general it works like in the past with normal spells, but you cannot improve directly to master. You have to read all lower levels before.
Journeyman and expert you can craft, but the needed material is extremely rare.
Adept and master should drop, but till today nobody in this forum reported a drop. Till today I havent seen one in broker.
Grandmaster you should craft from two masters. (Is this confirmed, I am not sure?)
Ancient cost 10 million platin from NPC.

Researching takes around 3 weeks for each level. Instead of researching you can buy an upgrade directly to master for ca. 45 US$.

I hope nobody spent DBC on the level 1 base potency increase. Apparently, you get new spells at level 5 and 10 to the base potency percentage.

I had already in mind to write something similare. 45$ for 5% more potency sounds ... let us say strange.

Together with my friend google I tried to find some more informations about the higher levels. Independently of the question is this already p2w or not, I believe no spell is 45$ worse. I bought already stone hammer (2. level) and regrete it.

If I cant earn it in game, I will go without. When this game becomes seriously Pay To Win, I will cry a bit and then leave the game and not look back. I have done that (for different reasons) to WoW.