Oh trust me, I've been dying to play ToO, but I knew, once again, that I could save cash by waiting, and then TTK gets announced... It seems like that will be my time to strike! I've just settled for watching YouTube vids until then, but I'm pretty competitive so I'm always fighting off that urge to get HoW! You're right though, TTK is reported to raise the level cap by like 15 levels so most of that gear will be obsolete unless Bungie implements another ascending system. Maybe you'll be able to use etheric shards like last time. After all, it does say when you go to ascend that: "This will raise this defense/offense to the maximum available in Year 1." Clearly TTK is the heralding of Year 2 which means we'll probably be ascending gear again, I hope. It seems that Bungie has addressed the issue of gear becoming obsolete on all fronts, which is definitely a plus!