Guild Wars 2

Introduction

Something that bothers me in GW2 is the lack of stat combinations. We have 10 attributes, excluding agony resistance and the professional specifics:

1. Power
2. Precision
3. Vitality
4. Toughness
5. Crit Damage
6. Condition Damage
7. Condition Duration
8. Healing Power
9. Boon Duration
10. Magic Find

With the current stat pattern (1 big stat + 2 smaller ones) that would make 360 different combinations (10 * (combinations of 2 elements out of 9). How much do we have ingame? 10? 15? Maybe 20 including the odd unnamed stat combinations only available for some ascended items.

Yes, some stat combinations have been added with content updates (Giver’s, Apothecary’s…), but it would take a long time until all 360 combinations are available. Therefore, I propose a new set of recipes that makes all combinations available. Think of the possibilities:

• Condition Damage + Condition Duration gear
• Boon Duration gear
• Magicfind no eating not the big stat on your items.

TL;DR: There are 360 possible stat combinations and here are recipe-templates to make them all available at once

Goals

1. The recipes should follow a logical pattern. It would be impossible to remember 360 different recipes. They should give a “mix and match” feeling, building an item with customized stats should not be more difficult than thinking about 3 stats.
2. The recipes should be easy to implement. That means, that the recipes consist of at most 4 ingredients and re-use existing crafting materials. Also, they should not clash with existing recipes.
3. The new recipes should cost material-wise as much as existing recipes.
4. Ultimately, this should make crafting disciplines more desirable. I think the customized stat items should be Account-Bound, Soulbound-on-equip. If they are not account bound, anybody could just buy the new stat combinations from the TP.

TL;DR: Read the italics

Material to Attribute Assignment

For Goal 1, each Attribute needs two corresponding (T6) materials: one for weapons and armor and the other for trinkets.
After you have decided which attributes you want to have, just have a look at this list:

1. Power: Blood, Ruby
2. Precision: Claw, Coral
3. Vitality: Bone, Azurite (?)
4. Toughness: Scale, Emerald
5. Crit Damage: Fang, Beryl
6. Condition Damage: Venom Sac, Chrysocola
7. Condition Duration: Karka Shell for both (?)
8. Healing Power: Totem, Sapphire
9. Boon Duration: Snowflake for both (?)
10. Magic Find: Dust (?), Opal

Yes, we have too less materials for a 1:1 assignment. Azurite and Snowflakes are not available anymore an Karka Shells have too different droprates compared to T6 materials. I see three solutions:

• Make Snowflakes, Karka Shells and Azurite available the whole year round and tune droprates accordingly.
• Make 2 attributes unavailable for customized combinations (Boon/Condition Duration?) so that the current materials suffice
• Introduce new materials.

Yes, each of those hurt Goal 2, but it must be done.

TL;DR: Assigned crafting materials to attributes, it’s not perfect

Recipe Templates

Now, to the core of the suggestion: the recipe templates. At first we need “empty” crafting products due to the four-ingredients-limit.

Empty Gossamer Insignia

• 5 Bolt of Gossamer
• 20 Spools of Gossamer Thread
• 5 Glob of Ectoplasm

Empty Orichalcum Imbued Inscription

• 5 Orichalcum Plated Dowel
• 5 Globs of Ectoplasm

Empty Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring

• 1 Orichalcum Chain/Band/Hook
• 1 Orichalcum Setting

Since in my beta-list Karka Shells are considered a gem, it needs a jewel recipe:

Exquisite Karka Jewel

• 1 Karka Shell
• 1 Orichalcum Filigree
• 1 Glob of Ectoplasm

And here are the customized stat recipes:

Customized Gossamer Insignia

• 1 Empty Gossamer Insignia
• 3 [T6 Mats for the big stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the first small stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the second small stat]

Customized Imbued Orichalcum Inscription

• 1 Empty Orichalcum Imbued Inscription
• 3 [T6 Mats for the big stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the first small stat]
• 1 [T6 Mat for the second small stat]

Customized Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring

• 1 Empty Orichalcum Amulet/Ring/Earring
• 3 [Exquisite Jewels for the big stat]
• 1 [Exquisite Jewels for the first small stat]
• 1 [Exquisite Jewels for the second small stat]

The trinkets are crafted directly, the insignias/inscriptions can be used for any armor/weapon like any of the current insignias/inscriptions.

TL;DR: Sorry, recipe lists can’t be any shorter – except for that meta-template:

Customized Insignia/Inscription/Trinket

• 1 Empty Insignia/Inscription/Trinket (new recipes)
• 3 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the big stat
• 1 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the 1st small stat
• 1 T6 Mats / Exquisite Jewels for the 2nd small stat

Yes. This. Please.

yes, but only if they implement something to make it easy to learn for new players.

As someone who knows the stats this would be easy to learn, but as someone who just got into the game, It’d most likely be pretty hard to understand.

If every inscription/insignia were just blank, and each fine crafting material (blood, bone, etc) were tied to a specific attribute they could have the formula be Inscription/Insignia + X of primary attribute fine material + X/2 of each secondary attribute and we could simply make whatever we wanted. Sure, the Trading Post would be a little bit of a pain to search. But we’d have full control over what our weapons and armor boosted.

gotkitten ed.5318:

yes, but only if they implement something to make it easy to learn for new players.

As someone who knows the stats this would be easy to learn, but as someone who just got into the game, It’d most likely be pretty hard to understand.

I think it’d be somewhat impossible for a player that can wear 3 stat. equipment to not understand what the stats. mean. At least they should have known the stats. related to his/her own build.

I would also like to add that they should get rid of all of the mystic toilet recipes for armor (not weapons) so that crafting would be viable again. Having a crafting system that has 0 end game purpose in the game beyond the 1 time xp boost for leveling and the 1 time use for making one’s own gear doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

I would also like to have the option (since we haven’t seen the new rewards system yet) to find T6 mats from salvaging blues greens and rares. This would help greatly with the manufacturing of runes and sigils and would bring them down out of the crazy-insane-in-the-membrane price zones we’re seeing with some of them.

/signed

Great idea, but ANet seems hesitant to pump out different stat sets for whatever reason.

An alternative using your idea would be let crafting be the only way to get 4 stat gear outside of the Ascended items. ANet can limit it to just a handful of combinations but it would give crafting some actual usefulness & uniqueness at max level.

Yes! This would make crafting a more refined and useful.

Campalishous.9076:

Great idea, but ANet seems hesitant to pump out different stat sets for whatever reason.

I think it’s for balance reasons (until Giver’s, boon and condition duration has only been available as runesets and via traits), but if certain stat combinations would break the game, it just means that the attributes itself are unbalanced.

Campalishous.9076:

An alternative using your idea would be let crafting be the only way to get 4 stat gear outside of the Ascended items. ANet can limit it to just a handful of combinations but it would give crafting some actual usefulness & uniqueness at max level.

If you mean by 4 stat gear something like this, you can make an exotic replica by placing a beryl/valkyrie jewel in a ruby/berserker ring. Before one of the patches summed the attributes up, you could see the berserker part and the valkyrie part (old wiki entry)

pmnt.4067:

1. Condition Duration: Karka Shell for both (?)

forgot about passion flower?

Something like “reforging” from WoW would be very much appreciated.

Maybe, in order not to destroy the market (since some popular sets like berserker and rabid are sold for more than other stats combinations), you could implement the possibility to change only one of the 2 minor stats.

This would add a lot more customization and open new doors to builds that are currently imperfect without the correct stats combination.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

forgot about passion flower?

Yes.

Metallus.7690:

Something like “reforging” from WoW would be very much appreciated.

Maybe, in order not to destroy the market (since some popular sets like berserker and rabid are sold for more than other stats combinations), you could implement the possibility to change only one of the 2 minor stats.

This would add a lot more customization and open new doors to builds that are currently imperfect without the correct stats combination.

Both reforging and changing one minor stat would add flexibility, but there would be still constraints. As long as there not all combinations available, there will some minority whining about why exactly THAT SINGLE combination is not possible.

For the market: Rabid may suffer and fall to mat costs, because it is currently not craftable. Berserker prices will remain, because the price difference between 5 blood and 3 blood/1 fang/1 claw is minimal. Tbh, I think the opposite will happen: the mat prices needed for berserker/rabid will rise to match the higher demand of crafted armor with that stats.