Guild Wars 2

The current system fuses Armorvalue + Statvalue + Rune into one single item. Straight to the point: I think this is bad and does hurt the game.

The Problem

So what does happen: People craft the current Armor and cannot change anything about it anymore. Sure it is possible to extract the rune with the Gem-store thingy. Sure it is possible to change stats of ascended armor in the mystic toilet. And also possible to overwrite a Rune in an Item.

But let’s face it: That are final, non reverse able changes and not feasible if one wants to temporary use a different build. Currently people are “locked” into their build.

Here is an example: I do play my Ranger with Zerker gear for “easy” content (dungeons, low level fractals, open world, story). I play my Ranger with Condition gear for “hard” content (high level fractals, raid). And I play my Ranger as Druid in Healer gear for some other content (need to babysit in high level fractals not everyone is a pro, raids, sometimes open world).

That are 3 armor sets with 3 different stat-values and 3 different runes – but all with the same armor value (I won’t talk about trinkets + weapons here because I do not think that a change there is that necessary).

This problem of multiple armor sets is not limited to me or rangers (I play most other classes as well but only my ranger has 3 sets).

A possible solution

I want to seperate Amor and Stats and Runes (into 3 parts)

The armor will still be crafted. It will have only an armor value (light/medium/heavy+rarity). It will still have a slot for a rune. New will be that there will be a slot for an insignia. Ascended Armor will also ofc have the infusion slot.

The Stats will also still be crafted in form of the insignia. The insignia will NOT be part of the armor recipe anymore but basically interact as a rune: You put it into an armorpiece’s new insignia slot and the armorpiece will gain the stats of the insignia

Runes will work the same as before: Just put them into the armor.

And now the important part: Insignias and Runes will not be fixed to the armorpiece anymore but can be removed without any cost or risk that the armor will be destroyed. It should only require you to be out of combat.

Effects
You will only have the “armor” that you have equipped. Additionally you will have insignias for each of your builds and runes for each one. You can change them out of combat and easily change your build

It will still not be “cheap” to get different stats. Even now insignias are the costheavy part of crafting an armor. For characters that only have (play) 1 build nothing will change costwise. For chars with more than one build the cost of crafting the “armor” will be missing

You wont have more than one armor-outfit expect if you craft a new set. So more transmutation-charges will be used (most likely)

The Rune-extractor thingy will be removed (or unnecessary for armor) from the gem-store and ANet loses 3,50$ of the people buying it to remove a sigil of generosity. /s

A few inventory slots will be free for chars with more that one build again (from 6 slots for armor to 2 slots for runes + insignias. So 4 free slots per additional armorset). 1 Build chars wont have more space.

[some economical impact. But I am only talking about a gameplay issue not an economy issue]

e.g. the value of loot will change. because the stats can be seperated from the armor. So less desired stats will maybe gain some value since the “armor” part of them is just the same as any other meta-stats-armor

What is to balance/discuss

Material-cost should be shifted so that insignias will cost less and “armor” will cost more. With that build diversity is not that costly anymore (which would be good for the game imho).

Is there any need to compensate people that bought upgrade extractors? (I think not. They got what they wanted and saved the gold that would have been lost if they had salvaged the armor – they wanted to keep that and that’s what they paid for)

What about people that have multiple armors for one char? (I think nothing. Existing armor will be reworked like I proposed. So they can simply separate the armors into pieces and use for other chars if they do not want to use different skins)

What should be soul/account-bound? (I think “Armor” should be soul and insignias and runes account bound (after use!). That way there will be no chars without any armor and Alts/non-mainchars can easily be geared if the player decides that an other char shall see some more action. Also “old” armor (e.g you crafted an ascended armor and do not need your old exotic any more) is not completely useless since the insignia can still be used for alts.) Keyword: Alt-friendly

Should this change apply to all armor? Isn’t this change too much for new players? (I think it should be applied to all armor. It would allow low level chars to improve their armor because they can transfer the stats they need into the armor they need instead of having the “wrong” loot and runing around with equipment -20 their level. Also I would not expect this change to push new players too hard)

final word

Since other “locked” mechanics like the traits that you could only reset by paying some silver (or the gem-store extractor) are gone I do not think that this change pushes in a different direction than the game should go.

English is not my mother tongue so forgive me (at least some^^) mistakes. Feel free to make comments on any point I made and discuss. I think that change is absolutely necessary for the game to be healthy but I am only a single player.

And sure thing is that I would be happy if ANet does implement this (or sth. with a similar effect) :P

My greatest fear: Something like I proposed is only implemented for legendary armor because that will push the gear-race to a completly new level.

Those are pretty good ideas, but I think we really just need proper build templates. The ability to equip multiple sets of armour, trinkets and weapons simultaneously, while having only one set active at a time, and instantly switching between them when out of combat.

People having been asking about a feature to address this issue since launch, but no luck so far.

> People having been asking about a feature to address this issue since launch, but no luck so far.

I also play Gw2 since launch but over time armor has got more and more expensive. From the basic armors to ascended and now the new stats that are ridicously expensive with easily 200g+ per exotic armor. normal ascended armors are also @ 800+-50g since HoT. The new stats at ~1000g.

That is a stupid amount of gold. Sure it might be a goal to work for but with HoT and the fact that different builds are actually viable instead of zerker + stack in the corner makes it simply is a problem for basically everyone playing but the 5 people that run the TP and have thousands of gold. For most people it it simply is not viable to have multiple thousands worth of equipment for each char.

And if the problem isn’t solved somehow this game will soon be dead for any new player that does not want to buy gems. And most likely for every “casual” that is good enough to run all content but cannot manage the equipment-gate because of lacking time.

This will not happen. It’s this way to act as a gold sink and to keep people crafting gear. If we went with your idea OP, one you have bought what you need, you never have to buy anything again. How will you and others make coin? If you take away how some players make there coin, you take away people who will spend coin on something else. In a perfect world this would be great, but it makes no economic sense at all.

You still have to craft insignias and you still have to craft an armor set. And if you would just write

“I think insignias should be soul bound because they act as a gold sink, making them accound bound will reduce the amount of gold sinks in the game and I do not think this is good”

I would believe that you actually read what I wrote. Because the problem you see only applies if the insignia is account bound (By your logic ascended armor should also be soulbound?).

The cost decrease by the fact that you do not have to craft the armor-part every time is not the major part of the cost. The large part of the cost is the insignia atm. And it still would reduce the cost of multiple endgame armors which currently is not often the case. How many players do have the money to forge multiple ascended armors for 1 char and also put enough agony resistance in each armor to be able to freely swap between them without negative effect?

The only time a player “saves” money is if one char runs more than 1 build/stat because it would not be necessary to craft a complete new set. The cost of a “second” ascended armor set will be reduced to only crafting the insignia needed. But also note that the armor part will be soulbound. So if you want to transfer the ascended armor to an other char you can only transfer the insignia but have to craft an new set of ascended armor for that char.

Balancing this idea in an economic sense was never the intend of this post. Thanks that you gallantly ignored that I wrote

> [some economical impact. But I am only talking about a gameplay issue not an economy issue]

and dismissed the whole idea because of sth. that I never intended to discuss or did discuss.

I wish there was a way to merge 2 different armor pieces to then allow the ability to select between the merged sets of stats and runes.

Merge a Beserker chest piece with X rune with a Clerics with Y rune. Get one piece that you can select either Beserker or Cleric and either X or Y rune.

Merge that piece with a Rampager with rune Z, get a chest piece that can select between those 3 stats and those 3 runes.

It would increase the amount of crafting/buying as each separate piece and rune has to be acquired separately to be merged with the one you already have.

I actually really like this idea. An added benefit would be that ANet could increase the drop rate of Ascended armor pieces without crashing the market by splitting it into armor and insignias, so it drops twice as often but you’d need twice as many drops to get the full piece you wanted. This would also allow gearing up to be more fluid: you could focus on getting a full set of Ascended armor, then work on upgrading from Exotic to Ascended Insignias rather than having to vault over both at the same time. It would have the same end result and cost the same amount of money, but you’d be able to see your progress more clearly.

In terms of binding, I think Exotic armor and Insignias should be soulbound while Ascended armor and Insignias should be account bound. Runes should probably always be soulbound, both to compensate for the increased supply and also to discourage everyone from buying one set of Strength runes, for example, and shuffling them from character to character, which would be quite the hassle.

BrotherBelial.3094:

This will not happen. It’s this way to act as a gold sink and to keep people crafting gear. If we went with your idea OP, one you have bought what you need, you never have to buy anything again. How will you and others make coin? If you take away how some players make there coin, you take away people who will spend coin on something else. In a perfect world this would be great, but it makes no economic sense at all.

On the contrary, now players would be motivated to acquire multiple sets of Insignias and Runes to fine-tune their builds for particular content rather than picking one or two armor sets that work for everything. I have two sets of armor for my Ele and Necro mains (and a set of healing power armor for my Guardian) but the others just have the one armor set. If I could swap around between different builds between fights, I would absolutely have 3-4 sets of Insignias and Runes for each of my 9 characters, maybe more.