I’m not talking about giving the devs suggestions. I mean there should be a lot of basic pieces that players can put together to create their own, unique legendary.
Let’s say I want a staff that has a mesmer’s shatter as a particle effect, a glowing core, small Chaos Storms as footsteps, rampager stats and a Sigil of Earth.
First I would have to find or create an exotic staff with the stats and sigil I want. This could be any staff as long as it is a level 80 exotic so it would cut down on the problem with precursors.
Next, because I want the staff’s base to glow, I would create the Gift of Light. At this point I can place both in the mystic forge and immediately get a glowing staff. Why immediately? Because that promotes progression by setting a visual achievement, instead of storing all the pieces in the bank while waiting to create the final product.
Going for the particle effect next, I would have to create the “Aura of the Mesmer”. Let’s say this requires 100 Superior Runes of the Mesmer, 100 Icy Runestones, 250 Globs of Ectoplasm and 50 jugs of Liquid Karma (100 may be too much with how slow present methods of collecting jugs are). To create it, I also need the recipe and max Artificer. Again, using the mystic forge, this can be directly infused with the staff I already have to apply the effect.
To gain the footsteps and energy trail (that either follows projectiles or melee swings) I would create the, “Path of Discord”. This would require 250 Asacalonian Tears, Deadly Blooms, Knowledge Crystals and Shards of Zhaitan each. In my opinion, dungeon tokens work best because they say, “I’ve been through this place and survived,” and they are already account bound so they have to be obtained personally. Toss them all in the mystic forge and combine the result with the staff and now I have the look of my legendary.
From here on I can choose to stop and enjoy a very awe-inspiring exotic or I can continue on and boost its stats to ascended level. In order to go on, I would need the Gift of Fortune (which would add an infusion slot) and the Gift of Mastery (which would up the stats to ascended level). Why go on? Because, in my opinion, legendaries should be the only weapons capable of having both fusion and sigil slots because of all the work needed to get that far.
The beauty of this system is legendaries will be more unique because they are based on pieces collected because of personal preferences. It’s potentially a lot less work on the developers’ part because they don’t have to come up with entire weapon concepts, just parts. Also, if I ever decide to change my mind at any time, I can take the weapon to the mystic forge with 250 Mystic Forge Salvage kits and get the basic components back. In my example, this will leave me with the staff, Gift of Light, Aura of the Mesmer and Path of Discord. If I stopped at exotic then the components are exotic. If I went on to legendary, the components will be ascended.
Naturally all components would be account bound. The final weapon would be soulbound but this wouldn’t matter because it can be broken down into account bound pieces and reforged to be used by a different toon.
As for the legendaries already on the market, this system would allow them to be broken down for their base components too so they wouldn’t lose their initial value. if such a system were to be implemented, I predict they the originals would vastly drop in value because people would want weapons tailor-made for their toons instead of prefabricated ones. In that sense, they would only be worth the sum of their parts.
You will notice I didn’t touch on naming conventions. At present, I don’t have any ideas for this, except, when you get to legendary status, I feel there should be an option to create a name for the weapon. This would further personalize it.
What do you guys think?