A) Legendary weapons - stat distribution type
Legendary weapons are currently universally tied to "power (main) - toughness (secondary) - vitality (secondary)" stat distribution, and are of the exotic item quality. We can transmute them freely at will with any other exotic weapon, to get the desirable stat distribution in case "power - toughness - vitality" one isn’t to our liking.
Seeing as recent blog post on Lost Shores update didn’t shed additional light on how legendary items will work post-update, just in case I’d like to suggest: allow us to change stat distribution of our legendary items at will, either through a mystic forge recipe or special NPC service (with or without fee).
As I understand it (your willingness to add additional legendary weapons in the future), your plan is to either add differently-looking legendary weapons boasting remaining stat distribution types ("condition - toughness - precision" for instance), or allow us to get legendaries with any stat distribution regardless of their skin through additional mystic forge recipes.
To my knowledge, however, obtaining legendary weapon (even post-update) will still be a much bigger undertaking than getting individual pieces of ascended gear, and therefore it would be problematic if we had to get few variations of the same legendary weapon just to satisfy our need for different builds, which happen to thrive on different stat & trait allocation.
B) Ascended gear - stat distribution type
Ascended gear is no exotics.
If there is no way to change slot type (offensive --> defensive, defensive --> offensive) of existing ascended equipment, let alone it’s stat distribution type once we can obtain full ascended gear set down the road, this will severely limit the diversity of play at high-end game content, by funneling hardcore crowd into "single best" build type for each profession, given how getting a whole new ascended gear set for every other build would be mostly impractical.
In turn, this might lead to negative discrimination based not just on gear tier for end-game content, but also the type of build in use (which is somewhat influenced by "endless" design of fractal dungeon, culling the originality and individual character of builds in favour of cookie-cutter, tested & proven strategies).
Gear progression itself is not a problem, but if it’s not handled properly as a system, the side effects on the builds people use, or the type of content they can freely participate in without experiencing discrimination will become a focal point of criticism in the future.
Please address this problem now & reassure community that you know what you’re doing, and that this won’t impact quality of play & social experience that this game currently provides to everybody, regardless of his build or gear in any type of content.
C) End-game gear in general - available stats
Currently, certain stat combinations (such as condition-precision-toughness) are not available for jewellery (only weapons and armour). In addition, stat customisation of backpacks is severely limited (lack of stat combination types, stat combinations available only on sub-optimal quality tier e.g. masterwork).
I’d like to suggest that you either allow every stat combination on jewellery & backpack, which can currently be found on weapons & gear (including Shaman which lacks it’s exotic equivalement) OR give us a way to create our own, preferred stat combination, including those not currently available in the game ("primary-secondary-secondary" stat system).
Again, this is important for diversity and unique flavour of character customisation in the end-game. Please don’t funnel us into a single "best" stat distribution on gear and single "best" build, you should do everything that you can to promote personal expression & freedom in your character progression system put in place.
Last-words complaint.
Ascended gear comes with "in-built" upgrade, which can’t be changed. I understand that you’ve hidden one upgrade slot on purpose, for the sake of simplicity - however, this will further limit the diversity and flavour of builds in the game.
Currently, full-exotic people can mix & match different jewels on their jewellery (e.g. power-precision-crit jewel on power-precision-toughness amulet), as well as insert either runes, jewels or crests of their choice to their armour and weapons.
In the world of ascended gear, however, this kind of freedom and diversity will shrink, because first upgrade slot is outside our creative control over our character, and there is no guarantee that additional "infusion" slot will make up for it in terms of unique flavour and diversity.
(edited by Demosthene.2195)