Guild Wars 2

So I’ve come across this a lot on the forums.
Most recently in a thread about a whole other topic – it just keeps popping up though :

People find it annoying and difficult to change builds on the fly because stats are linked to gear.

How is this a problem?

You can switch utilities whenever you want.
You can switch weapons whenever you want.
You can switch traits whenever you want.

All of this with minimal effort.

However switching sets basically means you have to carry around that extra set of armor. Considering you might like more than 1-2 builds this can quickly become a hassle and many people aren’t willing to do it.

Solution?

Ascended tier armor that you’ve crafted could be fused together allowing the newly produced item to switch between the sets of the initial pieces.

Example:

I have a pair of ascended Berserker gloves. And make a pair of ascended Knight’s gloves.
Instead of having to carry the second pair with me for when I might need it I can just fuse it into the first.
Through Fusion I’ve now unlocked the knight stat combo on my other gloves and can switch between these two stats freely just like you can do with legendary weapon stats now.

Will it make the game easier?

No – you still have to craft the items so you can fuse them. It won’t break the economy. It won’t ruin the game.
It will make it more convenient and more enjoyable.

So that’s my proposal – any thoughts?

I sort of had the same idea when I read a recent thread with this complaint.

You can even make the crafting require certain materials that you obtain through special events so that it’s a gated goal you can put on yourself. To be able to cray the ‘perfect’ armor that has all possible stat combos (until new combos debut) should take a very long time, not because of grind, just limited by time.

I’m sure people would consider it a great QoL improvement. Ascended equipment with all stats fused into it could even turn to the legendary purple color since it allows its stats to change to any combination availible (this would require crafting/obtaining 20 ascended items!)

Sounds like a good idea. If implemented it would need to include some kind of template feature so that you could switch a build with a click and not need to fiddle with stats on every gear piece one by one.

Agreed but on this way then it would be nice to add the same thing for ascended accessory since running with 3 build on same char cost already 3 full bags

Anet would prefer you buy more bag slots. In fact they would rather you made a double of your profession, and spend more money getting bag slots for THAT char.

Well they could do they same thing for exotics.

For instance I have a whole set of berserkers, dire and soldier on my warrior. Got cleric, berserker, soldier, knight on my guard. It takes up a LOT of space. Just let us merge all these items and swap the stats when out of combat.

I know it sounds economically flawed but they could sell these “fusion catalyst” items in the gem store and you’d have to use them to fuse your stuff.

Money problem solved.

At this point I don’t even care about them monetizing or not – I just want my kitten convenience.

I would go for a total split between appearance and gear, and adding ascended gear and upgrades as account-wide unlocks you can select in the hero panel.

Ascended upgrades would have the same properties as exotics, but would require a mystic forge recipe to unlock: eg.: Masterwork (500), Rare (50) and exotic(5) versions of the upgrade plus a blank ascended upgrade that is crafted by any of the crafting profession of that type of upgrade, and that includes a lesser vision crystal in the recipe.

Then, when the build templates are finally added, the gear part of the tempalte would look in your account-wide unlocks for the ascended equivalent, and if the template loader code can’t find the corresponding gear in the ascended unlocks, it will start looking for gear in the inventory, from exotics to basics.

Once that’s in place, you just go to the Template manager, pick the template you want, and as log as you either have the gear in the inventory or unlocked, it’ll be applied without altering your appearance, as the appearance slots go separately in the wardrobe.

I like the idea, but this would get very expensive, very quickly. Personally, I’d just like to see legendary armour and trinkets added, using their ascended counterparts as ingredients. That way, the time and effort put into crafting ascended armour (especially light), won’t go to waste – but at the same time, it won’t mean free legendaries.