What I see at the moment is the adding of a new tier of armor between exotic and legendary or rather at legendary level which (possibly) will take more time to get (naturally as they will release it tiered in content patches).
We already have different tiers of armor. at lvl 80, it takes slightly longer to get exotic gear than to get masterwork gear. now you have an additional tier which again takes (speculating) longer to aquire. This is a new Item quality, not new exotics with better stats. Do you think they will introduce a new quality every other patch? If they wanted to do a real vertical tiered gear treadmill, it would be way easier to add new exotics with higher stats in every major patch.
I hope it goes the way I envision this. If I am correct ascended quality will be where it is now and all you will see is items for other slots added in more patches. And if I judge Anets speed correctly, an expansion won't be too far off sometime next Year too. And I always believed that they will up the lvlcap in expansions and then also up the stats to a new plateau you can then again achieve.
This is an interpretation, nothing more. And I know too:
Pessimists are just optimists who are in touch with reality