Guild Wars 2

So when they announced legendary armor and how you could freely swap stats and runes, it got me thinking. What if that was just the standard way it worked for everyone? Kind of like how it is in PvP.

I understand this will probably never happen, as it would nullify a few systems that are already in place, plus it would require quite a lot of work. But an interesting thought at least.

The idea is that you remove all stats from armor/weapons, trinkets, and runes and then put all the different stat combos onto crests instead. Like how PvP amulets are. But instead of a single amulet, you would have multiple crest slots so you could still mix stats as you wish. And since crests already exist in game as an almost entirely unused item, it would bring a new use for them. I don’t know where the number balance lies on this to make it roughly equal to what it is currently though.

Armor/weapons would no longer have stats like power, toughness etc. attached to them except for the base defense stat. And with increased armor rarity you gain better crest slots for better rarity crests. This still gives meaning to increasing armor rarities, but for the most part makes armor purely cosmetic. So you wouldn’t need to have different versions of all the different skins in the game for every stat set, you would just need the crafting system to increase rarity.

Runes would also no longer have stat bonuses, they would just have their combat set bonuses. These would all need to be reworked to have proper bonuses obviously.

Trinkets would instead be used to add up your total agony resistance instead of sharing it with armor. However this would pretty much erase any need for different rarities or even different sets. You would just need a single set which was used to equip AR on.

And lastly, adding two slots for food so that you can map them to a hot key.

The goal behind this would be to simplify switching between builds. Instead of carrying around multiple sets of armor/weapons, taking up all of your bag space, you would only need to carry around the stacks of necessary crests and runes.

Additionally, this makes a lot of runes more desirable by removing stats from them. You’re no longer forced into taking stats you don’t care for just to gain certain combat bonuses. At the same time you can take the stats you do care for through crests.

I know that kind of takes away the QoL feeling of stat swapping from legendary items. But they would still have their unique animations and better crest slots, so I don’t really think they would become irrelevant.

I made a quick little picture so you could get an idea of what it might look like. What do you think? Would it work? Or do you prefer it the way it is now?

So, to me, this is about 3 or 4 suggestions wrapped up into a single post (nothing inherently wrong with that, but it makes it harder to reach consensus on any single idea as to whether the community likes it or not). And they are:

• Removing stats from armor
• Removing stats from runes
• Having crests be the way we add stats (basically a crest overhaul)

Yes, they are related, but I don’t think runes really fit in with your suggestion about moving stats away from armor and onto crests. That’s a different issue entirely and would also benefit from discussing an entire rune overhaul (since some runes are almost entirely just adding stats and only have an effect on the 6th bonus, and other similar problems).

Back to the main suggestion at hand, its interesting for sure, but it does have its downsides. Namely, you lose out on a lot of granularity when adding stats with it. Right now, we can have whatever stat combination on our armor piece that we want, and then we can choose to supplement that with either a crest (more options in how to distribute our stats) or a rune (again, most of which come with stats). So right now each piece of armor gives us 2 places where we can pick the stats, the armor itself, and the upgrade slot. Your suggestion would remove one of those places where we get to choose, which ultimately can make it harder to get the “perfect” stat distribution you were going for, as its substantially more likely you’ll have wasted stats somewhere.

Secondly, I don’t see anywhere where you take into account doubloons. Platinum doubloons especially do see some use in Raids for their boon duration. How would you propose the game handles the situation where someone wants to take a doubloon on an armor piece (IDK why they would put it on an armor piece, but there’s no stopping them if they want to)? Should they just get no stats at all for that piece? Or should stats go on doubloons as well? Or would we lose the ability to put doubloons on armor pieces to get around this?

Another potential issue I see arising is how many stats each crest gets. Right now, each armor piece has different amounts of stats they give. Would you propose that crests give a variable amount of stats based on which piece they are equipped in? I don’t know if the engine can handle that (it could, but I just don’t know). Or would you propose to standardize the stats from crests, so its the same regardless of which armor slot you place it in. And if we go that route, what happens to the crafting cost for each piece? Right now they are, sort of, balanced around how many stats each piece gives. With chests taking considerably more mats than something like boots or shoes. Would the recipes be updated to reflect the homogenization of stats for each piece if we went this route?

Overall, I like this idea. There are a lot of details that need to be fleshed out, but I think it could have merit. I don’t know if it would make the game any better, but I do like the idea on its own.

Good points. Stats don’t necessarily need to be forbidden from runes, you could still make new rune types that contain stats instead of combat bonuses, which would fill the same role as taking the crests or doubloons that we have now. Since those replace runes. Essentially you’d be trading something like “Shouts heal” for something like “+5% boon duration” or “+X Power”.

But now that I look at it, maybe 3 slots wouldn’t be enough. 6 slots would probably be better. That in addition to runes that contain stats instead of combat bonuses should still offer enough space to obtain desired numbers. Though I guess you would still end up losing a bit of that Min/Max freedom with all the available slots that we have for stats now. I personally just think it would make switching between builds more simple by reducing clutter while at the same time trying to open up more options with runes, which would undoubtedly need to be redone completely.

I don’t think they would be able to make the crests give variable amount based on the slots they’re in though. Even if it were possible, it could be confusing. They would probably just have to be static amounts based on the combinations we already have, where 6 crests is about equal to a set of armor, trinkets, and runes. The stats could still be 3 or 4 stat combos though, that shouldn’t need to change from current armor.

And lastly, I don’t really see it affecting crafting all that much. You would just craft crests separate from armor, which would require their own costs. Armor would mostly remain unchanged I imagine. You would still be crafting your armor to upgrade the quality, which would require their own amount of materials based on the piece. If anything, the only real difference is crafting would be way more consistent in price. As an example, instead of paying much different amounts for a berserker chest vs. a magi chest, they would be roughly the same because it would only be based on material cost to upgrade the chest piece to the next quality level rather than the stat type.

Like I said, this would require a lot of work to actually make it happen. It would need to be fleshed out more. And it steps on the toes of a handful of systems that are already in place, so it’s likely not even possible because so much would need to be changed. But if it were possible, I think it would be a really nice change, even if you lose a bit of Min/Max potential.