Guild Wars 2

I think it has happened many times to many players to craft or receive an ascended piece that, now or later on, we don’t or can’t use anymore because we no longer like the build that goes with it, or the build itself may have become inconvenient, but we can’t or don’t want to spend again all the resources that comes with that, thus basically wasting an ascended piece.
It may also have happened to somebody to misclick ascended dropboxes, getting the wrong piece.

Ascended are quite a pain in the kitten to craft or get nontheless. Crafting means expensive, but RNG isn’t always your friend.
Apart from those ascended pieces in which we can choose the stats from the very beginning, for all those people who are more likely to change their mind, and to favourite a little support in build diversity, I suggest to create an Ascended NPC.

This npc will be a converter for your ascended pieces, meaning that it will take one of your ascended pieces per time and change it with another one. To better explain myself, I’ll make a list:

• Each piece can only be changed for another piece of the same category (Weapon, Armor, Ring, Amulet, Accessory, Back Item).

• Each piece can only be changed for another piece of the same stats kind (Defender remains Defender / Healer remains Healer).
  OPTIONAL: Instead of using chests’ categories, they use directly stats categories, narrowing the possibilities of exchange (Berserker for Berserker, Cleric for Cleric, etc.).

• For armor, each piece can only be changed for another piece of the same armor slot (helm per helm, gloves per gloves, etc.)

• Each piece can only be changed ONCE per piece. In this way we obviously avoid to create a full set of ascended and then changing it at our will, thus hurting the market. The piece will show a small mark in the gear panel to show us that it has been already exchanged. Of course the npc will NOT change pieces already marked.

Gold Fee: I don’t think that such a system should require some fee, like paying gold to the merchant to convert the piece, because having an ascended piece means you have already either crafted it, thus investing in a lot of expensive resources, or got it from RNG, thus investing your time. But just in case:

• OPTIONAL: Possible fee of 1g to 3g per piece convertion. The benefit could be to create another gold sink that is all dedicated to ending gear.

Example: You get a Defender’s glove armorbox from RNG, and you want to put it on your ele for tank build, so you select light gloves. Later on you want to run another build on your ele, because you find it funnier, but wasting that ascended piece is nuts. You’ve got a tanky build on your war instead, that would really benefit from those defender’s stats. So you go to the npc and change your defender’s light gloves for defender’s heavy gloves. Nobody gets hurt, you are happy to keep your drop and you still get fun in playing the character you like.
Later on you want to change the Cleric’s Staff you’ve crafted on your necro to give it to your guard because you thought it was a good choice. So you go there, select Cleric’s Mace, done. You then equip it on your guard for your healing build with your bulky friend.

Runes, Sigils and Infusions:
A major problem is runes, sigils and infusions. For it I thought about two alternatives in the attempt to keep things balanced. I’m yet not sure which one could be more useful, probably the first one:

• Any Rune or Sigil on the piece will be lost. The gear will still be considered (infused), and any infusion will stay on.
  OPTIONAL: The infusions will be given back unattached in your inventory.
  OPTIONAL: The infusions are downgraded to Versatile Infusions.

• The Runes and Sigils remain, but in case you want to swap from a two-handed weapon to an off-hand or one-handed weapon you get to decide wich sigil to keep. The other one will be lost. The gear won’t be (infused) anymore, and any infusion on it will be lost.
  OPTIONAL: The gear remains (infused).

There could be also the possibility to choose between those two.

Possible Gem Store item (it is just a possibility that I’m considering to justify a possible income for the devs too from this system, I’m NOT directly proposing this):

• Mark Eraser: 100 gems per unit (or so), removes the mark from an already marked ascended piece, allowing you to change it again one more time.

It shouldn’t be a pay to win item because it still requires you to get the pieces, and also has all the limitations of the exchange on.

I’d rather the option to change say cleric to bezerker, if you happen to make the wrong gear. (it happens). Or to properly make use of a drop.

No 1 time limits, and no stat limits. But armour for armour, weapon for weapon(specifically, dagger for dagger, this will allow people to try different stats without too much hassle.)

Time gate it, can only change gear once a week. Or once a month. (at this point you have to change all your gear at the same time or change some of it and wait til the time gate is up.)
Charge 20g per gear stat change.

Or get rid of RNG and just let us choose the ascended stats if we get that insanely rare chest from fotm or another useless clerics ring. I’d rather have that. Or let us exchange asc gear for some kind of token. Your solution seems to address the symptom rather than the cause.