There is currently a lot of hand-wringing and anxiety regarding the new appearance system. I am here to dispel a very important misconception and clarify that you don’t need to spend transmutation charges every time you want to change appearance for the sake of PvP. Admittedly it is easy to fall victim to this misconception due to a couple of arguable oversights for the update, but I’ll elaborate on that later.
Before:
- You had PvP-only items with definite appearances that you stored in your locker and inventory. They took inventory space.
After:
- You have a database of skins (now in your bank, obsoleting the locker), also partially browsable from your appearance tab — this is an unlock system, a lot like achievements and crucially this takes no inventory space.
- There still are skin consumables to imbue an actual item with a particular appearance. As a side-effect, using/looting the consumable unlocks the skin, but you can ignore that for the time being.
- You have items with definite appearances in your inventory, that you can store in your bank as well.
Notice the similarities: before, you could choose to swap your Country helm for your Devout helm. Now, you still can. Before, you would receive or craft a PvP item with a definite appearance in your inventory. Now, you receive a consumable to imbue a definite appearance to an item in your inventory — say, to one of the common item you can buy cheaply at one of the PvP vendors. (I actually need confirmation that you do receive consumables from the reward tracks and do not merely unlock skins – without that premise everything I have said falls apart.)
In other words the transmutation charges everyone received serve the purpose of transitioning (as the items you used to have have vanished). They are not central to the day-to-day sPvP experience however.
Why you were possibly misled
Unfortunately there seem to be a few oversights that make the new system not up-to-par to the old one:
- Lockers were obsoleted, but there is no bank access to store or transfer your items so you need to leave the Heart of the Mists. Worse, you lost storage room (e.g. what if you were using your bank for non-PvP purposes?)
- Pieces like shoulder armors require the character to be level 11 — note that you sometimes receive tomes to level up via the reward tracks though.
- You buy common equipment at the PvP vendors with coin. You do receive coin as part of your rewards, but there also are additional uses for coin now — it remains to be seen if this is not an overall inconvenience. Worse, you may be tempted to use a skin consumable on one of the masterwork or better items you sometimes receive in order to same a bit of money, but masterwork or better items bind to the character, not the account unlike skinned common items. (I need confirmation for this as well, although I know WvW skins leave common items account bound.)