Guild Wars 2

I love the new system for being able to use the mystic forge to change the stats on your ascended weapons and armour. But it would be nice to take this one step further.

How about if you were able to combine several weapons, or armours of the same type in the mystic forge to be able to create the same weapon/armour type which you could then change at will to whatever stats you combined.

Example:

I want to combine two ascended light armour headpieces (one with zerker stats, other with carrion stats) I put them in the mystic forge + 2 other items . In return I get one ascended light headpiece back which has changeable stats for zerker and carrion only.

I then take this zerker/carrion stat headpiece and combine it with an ascended Knight headpiece + 2 other items in the mystic forge to produce one that can can have changeable stats to zerker/carrion/knight only and so on as long as you have enough ascended head pieces.

Why? To me this offers a much more flexible approach than having several different full sets of armour and weapons in you inventory when travelling, and change game modes etc.

Some people might be thinking hang on a minute doesn’t that infringe on legendary territory of changeable stats?

Not really because legendaries can change to any stat in-game (I think) and have cool effects. Trying to get a fully changeable ascended weapon would cost you much more than a legendary bought off the exchange (unless you are extremely lucky with ascended drops – and even then would cost you considerable coin).

This system complements the existing system of stat changing as you may wish change an ascended weapon/armour to a stat which you would then want on a changeable stat weapon.

What are your thoughts on this?

Several ideas about “Stat Libraries” for ascended (or legendary) gear have been floating around for a while and I think they will be introduced at some point.

However, a change like this will have a deep impact on the game economy and requires alot of dev time. And i dont mean only changing prices for alot of crafting mats but also account bound currencies, like spirit shards, karma, laurels, geodes or bandit chests, which are used in ascended stat crafting.

Escepially the trinket and back piece crafting/acquisition will need a mayor overhaul for this to happen.

And we would need a similar change to upgrade components, like sigils and runes as well, as you will want to use different runes and sigils on your zerker, condi or support builds.

Maybe they will already ship some basic changes with HoT, for example jeweling 500 or the ability to switch stats on trinkets and back items but i dont expect stat libraries for gear and upgrade components to make it into the game any time soon.

My guess would be a feature patch in spring or fall next year and it will be introduced via legendary armor/trinkets/back items and a rework of legendary weapons.