Afterwards in the mystic forge you'll need to combine your ascended piece with 5 Globs of Ectoplasm, an Antology of Heroes (you buy that from the vendor that stands near the forge,) and the insignia you crafted. (Be careful as this step will delete any upgrades you had on your gear.) Then you'll finally have your ritualist gear.
In other words, a numerically stronger weapon (ascended) can become weaker than a numerically weaker weapon (exotic) when downscaled. 2) Your attributes get capped at sub level 80 areas. This can be easily seen by attributes not changing while swapping gear. Effect varies on different areas because of the new attribute gain system.
Almost exclusively ascended tier can hold infusion slots, which is the pretty much the prerequisite to get into high level fractals. Higher level = more daily and better boxes. For raids, they have been done in green gear, but stronger is easier. From personal experience, I average 1-2 ascended drops a week from those.
You should always go for ascended if you can get it. There are several reasons -Stat advantage-Ability to add infusions-Can change stats anytime, so unlike exotics you wont need an entirely new set each time. You can simply change the stats on any piece at any time.-Can use ascended on other toons, unlike with most exotic gear.
except, you can salvage them. Buy an ascended salvage kit from a laurel vendor, costs 1 laurel and 1g per item. You can also, buy it from fractal vendor and save the laurel, pay 2 fractal relics instead. You can also buy them for 1 gold and 2 fractal relics, which is way better than using a laurel for that.

Ascended gear is the best tier. It's significantly more expensive than exotic gear, as a full set is timegated and costs 200-400 gold to craft. However, it only offers a 12.5% damage increase over exotic gear. You don't need to get ascended gear unless you want to run high-level fractals (in which case you need the infusion slots).

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guild wars 2 ascended gear