Do I need to upgrade damage/armor on my old gear before I can Ascend it?

My teammate last night had a couple of exotic shards sitting around and tested this. He Ascended two exotic weapons: one fully upgraded and one not. The weapon that wasn't fully upgraded did not have its damage upgrade nodes unlocked automatically after the Ascend, so it looks like you still need to fully upgrade the weapon to maximize its potential. Granted, this test was with Exotic equipment, legendaries may be different.

I think this Ascend feature was less for maxing out incomplete equipment, and more for upgrading maxed out equipment from the pre DLC 1 days. Case in point, I have a Vision of Confluence from the Vault of Glass that was awesome until the first DLC launched with higher damage weapons. With the Ascend feature, this weapon becomes useful again.

You still need to do the multi-step upgrades. Ascending them will up the Max Light/Defense to the new levels, but you still have to upgrade your current gear to "max" regardless of if it's old max or new max.