Since HoT is coming a lot of people had already complained that they will probably have to change their gear. If said gear is ascended I understand the frustration – my armour cost me nearly 500g to make. So now paying that much again will not make anyone happy. And what about the old gear? Give it to another toon – maybe.
But what if the stats will be of no use to that other toon? I’m suppose to throw it away then? So just keep it along the new gear? Ok but even if we don’t count spare weapon sets thats 14 – 16 used slots in your inventory. It’s 8 – 10 if we throw away trinkets as they are easy to get, but does that make sense? I mean if we intend to use that gear some time we will need them again, so now buy new ones just to throw them away again later?
Ok now someone is going to mention exotics which are much cheaper.
But that still doesn’t solve the throwing away old gear or using up too much inventory space problems. And it also brings up another problem which is FotM.
If the player intends to use the new builds/gear there it will have to be ascended.
Unless he/she only intends to do levels 1 – 9 or 1 – 19 as 10+ are still doable without infusions.
And there is one more problem – ascended gear chests. I’m not a person who really has this problem, as I only have 1 chest with which I don’t know what to do, because I don’t do FotM that much.
But I know a lot of you do because I have guild mates who have like 10 or more ascended gear chests which they are hoarding not sure of what to do with them.
Ok I rambled long enough and I think you all get the picture.
So my solution to this problem is something that was probably already proposed – give ascended gear the ability to swap stats.
NO IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK HEAR ME OUT PLEASE.
No I’m not saying make it like legendary weapons where you can change stats to any you want at will. No that would be unfair I admit.
What I have in my mind is something more ballanced. The ability to add new stats to ascended gear by merging it with other ascended gear or a insignia/inscription in the mystic forge.
What I mean is say you have an ascended sword with Rampager stats and you wish to add to it Knight’s stats to it. So you have to merge it in the forge with another asceded sword with Knight’s stats or a Beigarth’s inscription.
The sword you would get back would now have the ability to swap it’s stats between Rampager and Knight. The the process could be repeated to add a 3rd type of stats and then again to add 4th and so on. So in other words it would be possible to have an ascended weapon/armour which can swap between all stats available but it would be a very expensive to do so. I’m not exactly sure but it would cost around 700 – 1000g just for one piece of equipment.
And of course the process should be a bit harder when using an inscription/insignia rather than a full piece of gear. Which would be determined by the remaining 2 ingredients used in the mystic forge.
Like when merging leggings with other leggings you would need to add a Lesser Vision Crystal. While if you merge the leggings with only a new insignia it would require a normal Vision Crystal.
And then there would also be the 4th ingredient like I don’t know a gift of ascension maybe?
The process could be done with trinkets too.
So how does this solve the problems? Well let me use the Necromancer/Reaper as an example. I’m speculating a bit so forgive me if I’m wrong but the Reaper sounds like it will work best with a Power based build. But on the other hand the condition caps are suppose to raised or removed so Necromancers may have a future as “conditionmancers.” But if that happens there will probably be teams for both types.
And if the Necromancer can alter between Barserker and Carrion stats on his/her gear then they won’t have problems with joining either types of teams.
And same goes for any other class which will be able to do multiple types of gameplay.
This will also solve the problem of all those “useless” ascended chests.
As even if the weapon/armour you get will have stats which you find useless, you can still find use for it by adding stats you desire through the mystic forge.
For instance you may have 6 armour chests each with different stats but now you can add to all 6 pieces a Zojja’s insignia. So now you have a whole Berserker armour set.
Yes 6 insignias will still cost you but much less than forging the whole armour set and not to mention you now have a use for your previously useless armour chests.
And you no longer have to hoard alternate gear sets as you have one set with all the stats you may need (excluding alternate types of weapons of course).