Guild Wars 2

I am making this thread not to gripe about the new Ascended Gear, but rather to offer and brainstorm different ways to offer gear progression to players that want it WITHOUT vertical scaling, i.e. progressively statistically superior gear.

Anyway, I’ll list a few of my ideas, or things I read other people say to start, but I am hoping that other posters will list their ideas and comment on ones already posted. So without further adieu…

1. (From another poster) Add only increased magic find to Ascended Gear, but no other stats. I thought this was a decent idea. Gives people a clear incentive to get ascended gear, as it will help them make money. But in no way FORCES people to get the gear.

2. Allow “higher-tier” gear to “transform” into different stats or skins using a toggle, kind of like a gear respec. I think it would be really cool if you could have like two “specs” on a piece of gear, and then toggle between them out of combat. Like maybe your berserker’s chest plate with sorrow’s furnace skin could “transform” into a cleric’s chest plate with Twilight Arbor skin when you use some kind of toggle out of combat.

This would offer no statistical advantage over other players, but would be a major convenience for people that want to be able to switch between a “tanky” character and a more DPS oriented character without having to carry around an entire set of gear in their pack, or go to the bank everytime they want to switch.