Guild Wars 2

After testing the Renegade and the other new specs, I can say that I like most of them, but I also like the ones from HoT (mainly the Herald), and the various Elite specs surely have a lot of different uses, by effect and by design.

Swapping from Renegade to Herald and vice versa would take a lot of time and effort, and, in the process, force us to choose what to run “permanently”. The 2 classes not only have different traits, but also different gear stats (and that’s not even helped by the legendary gear, since it takes even longer to swap stats on that), runes and so on.

A way to save 2 builds and swap them was hinted years ago, and would be impressively useful to fast swap gear, traits and skills.

Thank you Anet and keep it up. Everything about this expansion looks great so far.

This has been asked for over and over again. We need this badly….please.

Yes, I said it too, and they kinda said they were working on it. The fact is that we need it now even more. I had no problem running Herald and Dragonhunter all day long. Those were basically “upgrades” to the core specs.

Now we have 2 alternative elite specs with very different uses.

So, how exactly would swapping gear between builds work? Do you need 2 sets of every piece equipped all the time? What if some parts of the gear are same and some are different? If they use same items, it is extremely easy to swap out some item for new while in other gear tab, and forget it was essential for whatever build was hidden.

I don’t really see problems with having traits and skills saved as build and swapped easily.

You equip your full gear and traits. You press “save build 1”.
You change traits (even on trait) and/or gear (even one piece). You press “save build 2”.

Once you have saved them you can press “equip build 1” or “equip build 2”.

If a piece of gear is missing that’s simply not equipped and a message is shown in your chat like “Fiery Dragon Sword is missing from inventory”.
The problem we are trying to solve is that changing between builds is not only prone to errors, but also takes a lot of time and effort. A gear swap macro would make life a lot easier.

And it was kinda promised long ago.

They could get round the multiple gear tabs, by having multiple gear screens. And the equipment would actually be equipped in that screen/tab but inactive until you switched to that build. If they then moved the traits into the same menu as the gear, that should make it easier to keep things together.

If that makes sense.

4 buttons (save 1/2, load 1/2) anywhere in the character UI would be enough,

FogLeg.9354:

So, how exactly would swapping gear between builds work? Do you need 2 sets of every piece equipped all the time? What if some parts of the gear are same and some are different? If they use same items, it is extremely easy to swap out some item for new while in other gear tab, and forget it was essential for whatever build was hidden.

I don’t really see problems with having traits and skills saved as build and swapped easily.

Trait profiles and Gear profiles can be handled in separate menus, since a respectable number of builds are modifications to just traits anyway. The Build save feature in GW1 only saved skills and attributes. But then again, gear stats were not a concern (armor was baseline, and most people just kept a head piece with a different rune to match the build). We also had 4 weapon sets, so storing multiple weapons was less of an issue.

Honestly….. the Devs could solve a lot of existing issues by implementing Gear Sets that slot alternate items, using the same method and rule set from Weapon swapping. To get it out of the way up front…. the only way to really justify this, is them selling Loadout sets as a Gem store upgrade. The ability to sell this will improve the odds of it happening… but also justify spending real Dev time making it as user friendly as possible.

So with that out of the way….. the premise is pretty simple, given its based on how Weapon swapping works. You have a Main set, which constitutes all item slots as a baseline. You then slot items you have to change into the alternate sets. This is to specifically take advantage of the hierarchical ordering behavior in Weapon sets when they encounter an empty slot (ie, look at the other set to see if its occupied, and default to that item).

Using Chrono tank as an example- In theory, the normal behavior of 2 gear sets allow for a Default of All zerkers setup, while Set 2 contains all Minstrels gear for max toughness. Using the empty slot behavior, your main set can be all zerkers, but Set 2 only contains 2 pieces of gear (Legs and a Ring) with Minstrel Stats. Swapping to set 2 switches the Legs and Ring; but it see the empty slots, and defaults those to the Zerks gear in the main set. You could also get creative by leaving parts of the main set empty, and slotting the (differing) equipment in Sets 2 and 3, as a way to manipulate the defaulting behavior.

For the fringe case of Legendary gear; having a Legendary item in the main slot changes the UI for the alternate slots to display a “Select Stat” and “Select Rune” (if it happens) on right click, and will tweak the meta data while the set is loaded. If understand the structure correctly, this should only appear for empty slots…. and shouldn’t cause conflict if similar items are sloted into those sets.

I absolutely support this! With 1 spec it was manageable but now no

simple fix for gear could be to create a type of bag for inventory which is exactly alternate gear for build only. items must be placed there manually, empty slots will not be filled by other kinds of items. when you click switch build assuming you can only save two on the hero build tab, almost like weapon swap it automatically equips all in that bag sort of like a consume all, or the manual double clicking on every item. every item in this bag would be equipped and replaces existing equipped gear. if you share items for both builds just don’t put it in this bag and there is nothing that will replace it

I remembered back when i played Rift, it had commands you could type in chat that do the job. It wasn’t perfect, as the matter of fact it was far from perfect, but it was a life saver.
To think after close to 5 years, we don’t even have this feature in GW2 is an abomination imo.
This is one of those QoL update that should have been seriously looked into and considered.

Kidel.2057:

4 buttons (save 1/2, load 1/2) anywhere in the character UI would be enough,

Why exactly 2 builds? Each class is able to easily have 3-4 playable builds for different types of situations. If you already provide the build swapping feature there is no reason to limit number of builds you can save and load.

Yes. Given the way that the new specs seem to poor at “all arounder” status, they REALLY need to include the ability to swap between Daredevil and Deadeye when out of combat without having to manually adjust a dozen different knobs.

every agree………………………………………….

Please could we do this? It would make things so much simpler. As it is, I run multiple characters with different set ups. A simple saved builds tab would be much easier.

more buildsaveings is better

Kidel.2057:

4 buttons (save 1/2, load 1/2) anywhere in the character UI would be enough,

Pino.5209:

I remembered back when i played Rift, it had commands you could type in chat that do the job. It wasn’t perfect, as the matter of fact it was far from perfect, but it was a life saver.
To think after close to 5 years, we don’t even have this feature in GW2 is an abomination imo.
This is one of those QoL update that should have been seriously looked into and considered.

Macro scripting would be fine too imo.
Probably even easy for them to make since they just have to expose some api with basically no UI at all.

FogLeg.9354:

Kidel.2057:

4 buttons (save 1/2, load 1/2) anywhere in the character UI would be enough,

Why exactly 2 builds? Each class is able to easily have 3-4 playable builds for different types of situations. If you already provide the build swapping feature there is no reason to limit number of builds you can save and load.

Because 2 > 0 and we have 2 elite specs.
Of course I could have asked for 10 build slots, but let’s begin with 2

This topic has come up many times. It’s been a pretty standard idea in other MMo’s, with no downsides once w/e game specific kinks are worked out. Once implemented it’s a huge quality of life improvement.

That being said, I have my doubts Anet will get build saves up and running any time soon if ever. I had some hope at one point when a post came up saying they were looking into it, then it drifted away into the nether.

Well I like the idea of this as well, like an option to save builds (say 3 slots for starters, maybe add the option to buy more slots if you want, also adds potential income for the devs), kinda like they have in warframe (there you can save a couple of loadouts and buy more slots if you want. It is really convenient!).

If an UI option is too difficult, just allow us to do commands like “/equip [Fiery Dragon Sword]” and “/trait <Honor 212>”.

This way we can save macros on a keybord and manage them.

We know Anet can’t/don’t want to implement a build template like GW1.

I can understand this thing could be difficult, but, why don’t just add some duplicate Hero Panel Skills and Equipment + Hero Build ?

ALL PLAYERS would love to have, at least 3 to 5 different :
- Skills
- Hero – Equipment
- Hero – Build
with a shortcut to switch between them at any moment (out of combat of course).

This way, we can switch build/trinkets very fast : I wan’t to play zerk in PVE, then condi in fractal/raid, then support/heal.
Switching gear/build took minutes each play session, hours each weeks, days each year … it could be done is seconds with multiple hero panels.

+ with more elite spe coming with xpac, this would we very usefull to switch between core/HoT/PoF/… builds.

We need SOMETHING. Whatever is easiest for ANet. I’ll take a kitten feature that only swaps traits and utility skills over a fully functional everything-swapper that might not ever exist. It’s not THAT hard to swap gear, just annoying.

If they’re going to insist on giving me build choices, they should make it much less aggravating to switch between those options regularly. I like to adapt to whatever content fits my fancy at a particular moment.

Corax.7381:

We need SOMETHING. Whatever is easiest for ANet.

Well, yeah. Actually I really like the idea of commands like /equip X and /trait X. This way we can build macros

I want this mode too. Anet has already told us that they are working on it for a few years. But where is it? When it is going to launch?
Will it take more that 5 years to come (like the new legendary greatsword, scepter and dagger)?

+1 hopefully this will happen, the sooner the better

I hope this happens. It’s truly needed in this game!

/signed

would pay gems for it.

At this point, despite the many times ArenaNet has expressed a desire to do this, I don’t think it will happen without a full stop gem store boycott by the playerbase until it is added. It doesn’t generate revenue for them, so they will only add it if starts to cost them money if they don’t.

Ayuruk.3980:

I hope this happens. It’s truly needed in this game!

I’m honestly surprised it wasn’t included by default with the second Elite spec.

Yep. There are posts over four years old suggesting the same things here.

At this point, it’s almost a deal breaker for me. Not too interested in this expansion unless this is included.

Maybe we can get a dev response. Other mmos have this, at this point in the game it’s really a no brainer

check this out:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Notes-from-Cologne-Meet-Greet/first#post6722993

“There will be no build templates at the launch of Path of Fire. …they are aware the community wants”

yes please, it’s ridiculous to open up my hero panel to drag trinkets to equip them.