Guild Wars 2

The majority of the cost of weapons and armor (especially Ascended) comes from their Inscriptions and Insignia, I’m proposing a way to either remove the insignia without destroying the item, removing the insignia while destroying the item or a way to add a new insignia and replace the old one.

Before anyone says: “But Legendary does that too!”, it won’t affect Legendaries that much, because in order to switch to a different stat combination, you’d still have to craft the extra insignia. I’m sure getting 1 inscription / insignia for each stat combination will make these way more expensive than getting a Legendary!

So this feature will be used to swap gear stats between a few 2-3 stat combinations. This system will make Ascended account bound gear all the more interesting, because you will be able to keep your Insignia/Inscriptions for specific stats on your characters, swap the armor and you are set.

It will also provide a far better itemization system. It will reduce the needed grind for Ascended, reduce prices for certain expensive ascended materials by a small amount (Insignia are the most silk-intense items), provide better Account Bound items, so it will address (of course it won’t solve completely) 3 issues that appear on this front page often:

1) Ascended grind
2) Price of Damask
3) Bound items

Thoughts?

Why would ANet try to reduce the cost of Damask?

ANet wants it high so that you will buy gems to turn it into gold.

I think a-net would do their playerbase a favor by making damask ask for less silk to make the weaving thread, if they’s ask for 50 silk… That would be a huge improvemnt.

Also decent ways to get wool, cotton and linen would be very appreciated…

But I do not see why we should make ascneded armors changeable, I expect legendary armor in -A- future, but not instantly.. which woiuld have changeable stats… But when It gets there I expect I maybe have ascneded for my mains already.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

But I do not see why we should make ascneded armors changeable, I expect legendary armor in -A- future, but not instantly.. which woiuld have changeable stats… But when It gets there I expect I maybe have ascneded for my mains already.

They plan on making everything legendary with changeable stats, however Inscription / Insignia swapping will allow more build variety. As I explained, exchanging insignia won’t make Legendaries obsolete, because you will only be able to swap to an insignia you already have crafted before

The cost of ascended won’t be reduced by very much (especially Damask) because the vast majority of Damask is used on the Insignia, however, this change will slightly reduce the cost of Damask, while also offering all the other benefits