yes, and it would be wonderful, amazing, if that was ever how balance was gauged or decided. But it’s not, that’s why the repeat comment/bringing it back matters.
And the reason for that is exactly that Ascendant has its own inherent ceiling, that i would like to keep too; but balancing based of other places, where if the floor changes, then “ruins” Ascendant - this is inevitable if it happens (which it already is)
So if you want to keep Ascendant having a sense of a ceiling you should care about Cruci/SR being used for balance metrics, because it will directly spill over, as it always has in terms of powercreep.
that’s up to them, if they can’t stand dying to new content they haven’t tried before, it’s their choice…
*again borks should be fixed, but that’s not all there is for sure judging by posts.
no…
it’s very very simple, which is also why i keep returning to Cruci as example because it’s such a simple black and white one.
Where the floor is, is where “everything” gets enabled. This was the case before too. Memes get buff to enter the floor, not just peak minmaxed, i think that’s a key misunderstanding, there was never a requiremetn for only XY set or combo, it’s the floor so it’s what default expected every decent end build can enter.
This is fine if the floor isn’t the ceiling too. But Cruci, and by extension Ascendant has an inherent ceiling, so if it also become the floor, like 170 was before, “the metric by which all is gauged”, then the ceiling becomes the floor, and optional challenge vanishes for everything (because powercreep galore).
I want the same as before, “all”(most half decent/semi optimized common sense) builds can enter and participate in the floor, but not necessarily perform equally. But if the floor is sky high, it means aaaalooootta build buffs to get the bottom half up on entry level… and then that challenge is gone because clear is guaranteed, the only difference is top top vs “bottom” acceptable performance; but still going to clear.
What happened last time we did that, was not only did memes become SR 31 capable, some budget builds could too, while “all” budget builds could participate in ex sr 65(26?). “jokes” could clear 31 comfortably even if not in top meta speed ofc, but that doesn’t really matter right, then it’s just a sematics state of potaytoes and potartoes chips with heinz ketchup or ranch dreseeing.
This spilled over to the floor not even being 31, but getting sneak increased, and sneak increased up to 36, while still buff feedbacked
^this will then “when it happens now/next round” spill over to Ascendant just like it did to MC before (you can’t buff a build only for 1 mode 
) which results in base Ascendant becoming more trivial and trivial, until it’s no longer hald decent/semi common sense build doing juiced ascendant, but the budget kits too.
^and “if”/when that happens, Ascendant is back to being the old regular Ult, just like it was before, because the enemies have been nerfed to smitherines while builds have been buffed to trivialize even the hardest of it.
“and that’s what i don’t want to happen”, by then default expecting ex new cruci 200 to be the default norm aka floor…
Flip it around and use an SR value if that makes it easier to swallow. But where balancing feedback is based off matters, because it spills over to every other aspect of the game, and not all areas of the game is limitless (MC/Cruci), so when that limit is hit, the challenge is gone. - i’m trying to preempt that crying “dont’ expect the new ceiling to be the new floor”. And 200 is just one of those new ceilings to use as stick…
Memes can be uplifted, they should, and it’s fine, they always were, but it doesn’t have to be on a ceiling = floor ratio, for all builds, including non memes…
then you have not been here the last 5 years and seen the “meta” evolution and game impact if you think that
like… reaching a point where killing a Celestial in 1min was deemed too slow/“build need buffs”, and 5min SR was #deadbuild when 8+ had been the norm.
“point in case” we’re so far moved from the old days of non-steamroll events happening, specially with FoA bonuses too