Alternatives to the Legendary Armory: Heirloom equipment, Jeweler 500, and more

An alternative idea to the Legendary Armory being planned since a few months ago:

The Armory system

Instead of designing a whole new system for legendary equipment alone, I'm taking the idea further, and widening the system to cover ascended equipment as well:

• The Armory is an accountwide unlock system for ascended and legendary equipment, letting you share the same equipment across multiple characters at once, no gear swapping required.
• Any ascended or legendary equipment piece can be stored inside the Armory. Once stored, it can't be taken out. Stored equipment will appear directly inside the equipment tab, taking no inventory space.
• Legendary equipment will be stored on its original form, but ascended equipment will be transformed into heirloom rarity (dark red color).
• Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.
• Heirloom armor, weapons, and back items include a new exclusive skin upon unlock, which can only be obtained by using the armory system.
• Heirloom equipment can be transmuted for free, with no transmutation charge costs.

Storage process

• Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from Miyani. Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.
• Use your storage kit on the piece of equipment you want to store. The selected piece will permanently disappear from your inventory.
• If the selected piece was already unlocked (item type + stat), the storage process will fail and the piece will remain in your inventory.
• The account vault will keep track of your unlock progress in a new section, called Armory Storage.
• Completing a legendary set will automatically unlock its corresponding heirloom set.
• Transmutation Charges have been removed from the gem store. Additional charges can now be purchased from Miyani in exchange of Spirit Shards.

Storage restrictions

• Ascended back items can't be stored until they've been infused.
• Ascended rings can't be stored until they've been infused and attuned.
• Ascended precursors and slumbering legendary trinkets can't be stored until they've been upgraded to their final version.
• Basic Agony Infusions and Swim-Speed Infusions have been demoted to basic rarity, and cannot be stored.
• Stored upgrade components can only be socketed into stored equipment.

Heirloom restrictions

• One-handed weapons need two separate unlocks before dual wielding is available. Each stat only needs to be stored once.
• Heirloom runes need six separate unlocks before a full set is available. Each type only needs to be stored once.
• Heirloom sigils need four separate unlocks before a full set is available. Each type only needs to be stored once.
• Underwater equipment does not require additional rune and sigil unlocks, and can slot the ones from the ground equipment they're replacing.

Updates to crafting

Ascended runes, sigils, and infusions will be introduced through updates to jeweler and scribe:

Grandmaster Jeweler

• The maximum rating for the jeweler discipline has been increased to 500. Ascended infusions will be available upon reaching a rating of 500.
• Ascended infusions have the same stats as rare/exotic infusions, but can be extracted for free.
• Enrichments and cosmetic infusions can be upgraded to ascended variants through the Mystic Forge, requiring crafted ascended infusions as one of the ingredients.
• Basic Agony Infusion recipes have been moved from the Artificer into the Jeweler.
• Jewelers have gained new recipes mirroring the vendor options from INFUZ-5959 and Dive Master Astora.

Grandmaster Scribe

• The scribe discipline has been heavily redesigned, and can now be trained outside of guild halls.
• Mirroring the chef discipline and its nourishment production, scribes can now craft a wide variety of enhancement consumables. Scribes also gain access to common rune and sigil recipes.
• The maximum rating for the scribe discipline has been increased to 500. Ascended theses, ascended runes, and ascended sigils will be available upon reaching a rating of 500.
• Ascended runes and sigils have the same stats as exotic runes and sigils, but can be extracted for free.
• Legendary runes and sigils have been upgraded with a new cosmetic effect.
• Guild recipes will only be available from Scribing Stations inside guild halls.

Pros and cons

• You unlock your ascended items for the whole account, but lose the ability to salvage them once they're no longer useful.
• You unlock ascended stats for all items of the same type, but lose the ability to swap stats in the Mystic Forge.
• You gain new armor, weapon, and back item skins, but lose the ability to transfer transmuted pieces between different characters.
• Since we're working with stat unlocks now, build templates (plus their corresponding chat codes) containing gear information could become possible through the armory system.

Well, that's my ideal approach for the Armory system, hope you liked it!

PS: The prices and costs can vary, but I'm confident they shouldn't be monetized through the gem store, since the Armory system would already be tied to the Equipment Template system. The game can always use some good old money sinks as well, and this would be a great opportunity for that.

It feels like the Heirloom system you detailed above will devalue Legendary gear. Part of the draw of the Armory is that it will provide more value for Legendary gearing, potentially driving more players to invest their time and gold into farming and crafting Legendary gear. The gear sharing option of Legendary Armory has already inspired many players to start their first Legendary or work towards adding more to their collection.

By pairing that same advantage with Ascended gear, you make Ascended more valuable to attain as well. If a player can cherry pick the stats they want by crafting Ascended gear and using your Heirloom system, then why would they ever move towards crafting Legendary items?

Isn't one of the main reasons for the armory to make legendary items feel more useful and valuable? Adding ascended items would kind of defeat that purpose.

@"Mungo Zen.9364" said:It feels like the Heirloom system you detailed above will devalue Legendary gear. Part of the draw of the Armory is that it will provide more value for Legendary gearing, potentially driving more players to invest their time and gold into farming and crafting Legendary gear. The gear sharing option of Legendary Armory has already inspired many players to start their first Legendary or work towards adding more to their collection.

By pairing that same advantage with Ascended gear, you make Ascended more valuable to attain as well. If a player can cherry pick the stats they want by crafting Ascended gear and using your Heirloom system, then why would they ever move towards crafting Legendary items?

This.

I'm sorry. I get the first ascended set seems like a huge amount of work. Followup sets difficulty depends on which content is played, but any "endgame" content like fractals, strikes or raids will provide players with tons of ascended gear over time. Any player who spends at least some time in this content, be it T4 fractals or the "easy" strikes, will end up with a couple of sets within a year.

There is 0 reason to make ascended gear account unlocked and give it the same benefits of select-able stats besides completely removing itemization from this game.

As far as the pros and cons... seems like you forgot to actually include some actual cons:

• this system removes long time itemization motivation from the game, something ascended gear was specifically introduced to combat
• this system decentivizes crafting of legendary gear which leads to less long term goals again, might aggravate current players who invested into this gear as well as have drastic in-game market effects
• increasing legendary runes/sigils stats causes a direct power creep which makes legendary gear mandatory. That is a move away from the current stance of legendary items not being stats beneficial

+1 for not making ascended gear accountwide without needing to swap in between inventory nor adding stat creep to the game in the form of ascended infusions, heirloom runes or sigils. If they're the same stats but can be extracted for free, it hurts the game economy because you nullify one of the advantages of legendaries. If you need to swap armor between characters consider the use of exotics if you're not doing fractals.

Everything other than armor is rather fair to obtain in the current system, whether it is weapons or otherwise (rings, trinkets , amulet). The stat bonus on backpiece is not necessary if you have a level 78 exotic backpiece with an infusion slot. If you don't do fractals often for 100g or so you can get Bough of Melandru which has 2 infusion slots and is Ascended.

Instead of this abomination a better suggestion would be a way to obtain more ascended backpieces for people that only do the current episodes. That would mean a ascended backpiece for tyrian defense seals or whatnot. Weapons and armor are largely accessible via crafting and strikes for the general playerbase that does not necessarily do instanced content. For people not doing fractals the biggest investment is weapons (~5% damage buff alone from weapons) which is why I initially suggested that any upgraded tier Stormcaller weapons should be ascended if they are accountbound : ascended amulet, ring, and trinkets are easily obtainable via eternal ice shards. Arenanet have done it properly with the Boneskinner weapons , however, as the upgraded ones requiring vials are ascended stats. Likewise there's a 1000 mistborn coffer "pity timer" for Dragonfall.

edit: There's also people that run "slumbering legendary trinkets" that you disincentive through your system. Not everyone wants the balls everywhere.

Limiting it to "ascended back items can't be stored until they've been infused" penalizes players that don't do fractals or don't have enough relics to infuse every stat. Not to mention it penalizes people that use Bough of Melandru which has 2 infusion slots without infusing.

Limiting it to "ascended rings can't be stored until they've been infused and attuned" means anyone who only does low tier fractals is out of luck. You need T3 materials to infuse anything that doesn't come infused already , unless you will be dropping money to upgrade the tier 2 or tier 1 fractal mist essence material to T3.

The nullification of endless upgrade extractor would annoy many people that bought that as well.

If I have legendary gear, why would I want what you propose for ascended?

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:It feels like the Heirloom system you detailed above will devalue Legendary gear. Part of the draw of the Armory is that it will provide more value for Legendary gearing, potentially driving more players to invest their time and gold into farming and crafting Legendary gear. The gear sharing option of Legendary Armory has already inspired many players to start their first Legendary or work towards adding more to their collection.

By pairing that same advantage with Ascended gear, you make Ascended more valuable to attain as well. If a player can cherry pick the stats they want by crafting Ascended gear and using your Heirloom system, then why would they ever move towards crafting Legendary items?

The only thing this system does is saving you the hassle to moving accountbound gear between characters.

The value of legendary gear is that it has all the existing stats, present and future. I don't think it needs anything else.

@Cyninja.2954 said:As far as the pros and cons... seems like you forgot to actually include some actual cons:

• this system removes long time itemization motivation from the game, something ascended gear was specifically introduced to combat
• this system decentivizes crafting of legendary gear which leads to less long term goals again, might aggravate current players who invested into this gear as well as have drastic in-game market effects
• increasing legendary runes/sigils stats causes a direct power creep which makes legendary gear mandatory. That is a move away from the current stance of legendary items not being stats beneficial

• How does it remove itemization? You still need to get the gear in the first place. Also, by storing ascended gear you'd lose the ability to swap stats through the Mystic Forge, so you'd need to get a new piece to get a new stat.
• Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).
• No one said legendary runes/sigils should be getting better stats, read the thread again.

@Infusion.7149 said:+1 for not making ascended gear accountwide without needing to swap in between inventory nor adding stat creep to the game in the form of ascended infusions, heirloom runes or sigils. If they're the same stats but can be extracted for free, it hurts the game economy because you nullify one of the advantages of legendaries. If you need to swap armor between characters consider the use of exotics if you're not doing fractals.

Seriously, are we reading the same thread, or do you guys post without reading what you're replying to in the first place? Where is that stat creep you mention?

@DarcShriek.5829 said:If I have legendary gear, why would I want what you propose for ascended?

You wouldn't, legendary gear is better since you pay once to get all stats.

Still, even if legendary armor is somewhat common, it's pretty rare for anyone to have a full set of legendary weapons, so lot of people would use the system to share ascended weapons across their characters.

The armory should only be for legendary armor. Ascended armor should not be included.

@"Lonami.2987" said:Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).

Given how cheap (especially when running a lot of "endgame" content) Ascended gear is, how do you suppose Legendary gear will become cheaper than using this system?Let's make an example, Chuka and Champawat costs 2239 gold to make (using gw2efficiency data, which calculates if it's better to craft or buy from TP automatically, I assume the cheapest possible path)

• Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.

Let's see how much gold you'd need to unlock every possible stat combination that is available with crafting (prices rounded up):Zojja: 48gKeeper: 48gStonecleaver: 47gChorben: 45gSteelstar: 48gCoalforge: 46gSoros: 48gBeigarth: 47gAngchu: 46gVentari: 49gLeftpaw: 46gTonn: 49gZingtl: 46gZehtuka 47gTixx: 48gVerata: 48gOccam: 49gGrizzlemouth: 46gMathilde: 46gGiftbringer: 47gTizlak: 49gSvaard: 48gLaranthir: 48gOssa: 48gRuka: 49gThe Twins: 45gYassith: 48gNadijeh: 47gPahua: 54gMaklain: 51gNerashi: 45gTheodosus: 47gHronk: 46gEbonmane: 49gWupwup: 49g

As you can see, all different Ascended Shortbow types, except Maklain, cost under 50g. Even if we take every stat at 50g, we have 35 stat combinations, giving us a cost of 1750g to have a Heirloom Short Bow that has all the stats, and convinience of the Legendary Short Bow.

I know you said "The prices and costs can vary" but for the sake of argument, let's use your own suggested prices

• Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from Miyani. Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.

20 gold for 20 uses? In the example above, that's 2 Armory Storage Kits, bringing the cost to 1790g. And 400 Transmutation Charges. At worst you can buy 400 Transmutation Charges directly from the gem store for 2400 gems. You need 34g per 100 gems, so that's 816g, bringing the total to 2606 gold, which is more than the Legendary weapon. However, the price is if you get every single stat (there are 35 of them) AND you have zero transmutation charges available.

Also:

• Transmutation Charges have been removed from the gem store. Additional charges can now be purchased from Miyani in exchange of Spirit Shards.

This essentially keeps the total price of the Heirloom Short Bow at less than 1800g (and with inflated values due to rounding) compared to a legendary weapon that costs almost 2300g. And remember this is for every single stat combination, players that need 5 or 10 of them (out of the 35 total) will pay significantly less.Meaning, your prices are way way too generous.

• Heirloom armor, weapons, and back items include a new exclusive skin upon unlock, which can only be obtained by using the armory system.

The second unique aspect of the Legendary items, their skin, is going to be challenged here? That would obviously depend on how good these skins are going to be, and even then it's a very subjective decision, but still this exclusive look, if it's any good, will make Heirloom weapons even better than they already are.

Finally we have this part

Any ascended or legendary equipment piece can be stored inside the Armory. Once stored, it can't be taken out. Stored equipment will appear directly inside the equipment tab, taking no inventory space.

So 35 inventory items taking no space at all? Either in the bank or any character's inventory? That's huge on its own as the maximum a bag slot can contain is 32 (less than the needed 35) and it requires 400 gems to unlock, bringing us to other important savings compared to using the legendary weapon.

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:It feels like the Heirloom system you detailed above will devalue Legendary gear. Part of the draw of the Armory is that it will provide

more

value for Legendary gearing, potentially driving more players to invest their time and gold into farming and crafting Legendary gear. The gear sharing option of Legendary Armory has already inspired many players to start their first Legendary or work towards adding more to their collection.

By pairing that same advantage with Ascended gear, you make Ascended more valuable to attain as well. If a player can cherry pick the stats they want by crafting Ascended gear and using your Heirloom system, then why would they ever move towards crafting Legendary items?

I think you are devaluing the system you presented in the OP. It does a lot more than just easing the hassle of moving account bound gear. That is the concern being raised, is that it is very strong compared to what Legendary is providing. So strong that it makes Legendaries potentially worse in the long run. Why? The cost (gold/time/mats) to attain a Legendary item is far greater than that to attain an Ascended item.

While a system could be sorted out to balance this, it would likely make Ascended gear prohibitively costly. For example I can farm Ascended gear from Living World Seasons to attain say, multiple Ascended backpacks far faster than the Legendary counterpart. Instead of having to farm PvP/WvW and Instanced PvE content I can casually run around an open map farming a set currency. This ease of access means that a player can pick the stats they know they will use, farm that and do so at a fraction the investment of a Legendary.

As you stated, Legendaries do get all stats which is a bonus for sure but, there are 52 (I think I counted right) stat combo for armor/weapon it appears, how many of those would the average player need or want? If given the system you presented, how many stat sets do you think players will farm for? 3? 5? 10? And once invested in your system, would a player be more likely to put more Ascended gear into it, or break from it and start farming Legendaries? There are many Ascended items that can be farmed with no Tradeskills, no Instances, no Competitive Modes, no Collections, no Quests....

To avoid this trap and to keep Legendaries relevant, the cost to either attain Ascended gear would have to increase or the cost to use your proposed system would need to be relatively high to not detract from Legendaries investment. All things that could be sorted out for sure, but given that Legendary already fulfills this purpose (or will with the Legendary armory) why have Ascended do the same at a potentially increased cost?

As a player, I used to be a hardcore MinMaxer, someone who put the minimum required into the game to get the maximum effect. That part of me loves your suggestion as it would bypass the need to ever look at Legendary items. The time investment, having to suck it up and figure out PvP and WvW, the crafting mats and quests, all gone and forgotten. Your system would make it easier for me to ignore giant chunks of game content in the pursuit of Legendaries. I have no shame in exploiting what I perceive as gaps or weaknesses in game systems (not cheating just, taking advantage of what is presented) and your system presents a gap between Legendaries and Ascended I could drive a truck through.

EditSeems we were all responding to you at the same time...with similar responses....

I appreciate you spent a lot of time designing your new system, and it is good to share ideas.However, at present the only differences between Ascended and Legendary items is that Legendary items look better (opinions may vary) and can change stats (which is useful). Your armory system reduces this to Legendary items have a different skin. So what's the point of having them at all?It's not hard to get ascended items, and these are already the highest stats you can get. Currently the only disadvantage for ascended items is if you want to have several different stat options on one character, where multiple sets take up space in your inventory/bank. Even then, it's much cheaper to buy more storage for this than to make a Legendary set.

I'm against this as it significantly devalues legendary equipment. It seems as if the intent of this system is to circumvent needing to go for legendary equipment altogether by forcing a way for ascended equipment to indirectly function more like legendary equipment.

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:As you stated, Legendaries do get all stats which is a bonus for sure but, there are 52 (I think I counted right) stat combo for armor/weapon it appears

Small correction: There are 36 stat combinations available to Ascended equipment, 11 stat combinations are exclusive to PVP and are not available on Legendary or Ascended items. There are 2 stat combinations, Forsaken and Apostate, that are for leveling equipment also not available on either Ascended or Legendary items since they are not level 80 stat combinations. Finally we have Captain which isn't available on most Legendary/Ascended items as it's a backpack exclusive stat combination.

Legendary equipment was originally supposed to be a prestige item. It had the same stats and utility as exotic armor. All the additional perks of legendary armor were added later. I don’t really care if it gets devalued or not.

I like this idea.

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:As far as the pros and cons... seems like you forgot to actually include some actual cons:

• this system removes long time itemization motivation from the game, something ascended gear was specifically introduced to combat
• this system decentivizes crafting of legendary gear which leads to less long term goals again, might aggravate current players who invested into this gear as well as have drastic in-game market effects
• increasing legendary runes/sigils stats causes a direct power creep which makes legendary gear mandatory. That is a move away from the current stance of legendary items not being stats beneficial

• How does it remove itemization? You still need to get the gear in the first place. Also, by storing ascended gear you'd lose the ability to swap stats through the Mystic Forge, so you'd need to get a new piece to get a new stat.

You are assuming players get an item with a certain stat combination only 1nce.You are assuming that exchanging runes/sigils is free for ascended gear or that each and every single stat combination will use the exact same rune.You are in no way compensating for the fact that ascended gear DROPS. How many legendary items have you had drop?You are in no way compensating for the fact that stat changing current ascended gear costs around 5 gold+inscription+loss of runes/sigil (which makes this go up to around 10-15 gold and above depending on stat changed too and rune/sigil lost).You are completely ignoring that from the available stats, only around 5-8 are actually desirable.

Even worse, the proposed system gets worse as you apply it to cheaper and cheaper ascended items. The cheapest ascended items you can get are trinkets both in gold value of converted resources as well as time spent in acquisition. This is the reason that legendary trinkets are by far the most expensive upgrades to make.

So yes, it removes itemization in a huge degree. maddoctor.2738 did a nice calculation of how even crafting nearly all stat combinations is cheaper compared crafting 1 T2 legendary. That is not even needed, given a majority of those stats aren't even desirable and never will be.

@Lonami.2987 said:

• Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).

Not with your system which tilts the benefit even more in favor of ascended gear. It's not even desirable now and will barely become desirable IF the legendary armor gets introduced and works how we assume it does.

@Lonami.2987 said:

• No one said legendary runes/sigils should be getting better stats, read the thread again.

True, I misread that part and only got the upgrade part. Still devalues runes and sigil in the same way as legendary gear because once again, from the available runes/sigil only a small subsection is actually used/desirable.

Your idea not only adds convenience, it literally REMOVES the necessity to craft multiple items per character. It makes ascended gear, which as mentioned can drop and does drop rather often in endgame activities, scale to the amount of characters per account. This scaling will already pose a significant challenge with legendary gear IF it gets introduced (and for the record, I'm still not sure legendary gear will work the way we all believe), it will makes itemization absolutely pointless if implemented for gear below legendary level.

FYI, by the time I did accumulate the amount of legendary gear I have, I also accumulated around 60-70, yes 60-70, full sets of ascended armor, hundreds of weapons and trinkets. My 34 characters are nearly ALL full ascended with multiple gear sets each. How? I've been running fractals, raids, WvW and even in part Spvp for years. I've probably crafted around 6-7 sets of those, the rest was from drops. Even those 6-7 sets would have been more than enough to deck out ALL my characters now with pretty much any stat I would desire. With your system, I would have been "done" with itemization in this game around 4 years ago.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).

• Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.

• Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from
  Miyani
  . Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.

• Transmutation Charges
  have been removed from the gem store. Additional charges can now be purchased from Miyani in exchange of
  Spirit Shards
  .

The prices/model I gave are in no way final, but still, pretty good analysis. I don't want it to be too expensive, since in the end, the goal of the armory is to let you swap ascended and legendary equipment easily, without having to swap characters and use the bank to transfer your gear. You don't get any "new" thing, you just get an easier way to use what you already own.

Also, I'd say the legendary skin compensates the gold difference. Plus, you don't get just the existing stats, but any future stats as well.

The prices I followed are based on getting a complete build stored. So, 6 armor pieces, 6 runes, 2-4 weapon slots, 4 sigils, 1 back item, 5 jewelry. Leaving infusions and underwater equipment out, that would be a total of 24-26 (let's round it to 25) items to store.

At 1 gold and 10 transmutation charges per use, each build would cost 25 gold and 250 transmutation charges; maybe a bit too cheap. Assuming we have all 9 professions, plus 3 builds per profession, that's a total of 27 builds. Let's say 50% of the items are shared (many builds use berserker stats), so let's leave it at 15 complete builds.

The estimated final cost for storing the gear from all your builds would be 375 gold plus 3750 transmutation charges. I originally made the Armory Storage Kit have 10 uses instead of 20 (so the final cost would double, 750g plus 7500tg), but I feel like making the system affordable is positive for the game as a whole, specially when you have so many players running around on gear below exotic rarity.

I have two bank tabs full of ascended chests, so yeah, this system might be pretty cheap for veterans like me, but that's not the point, the armory should be something everyone can use, even new players who will be crafting their ascended armor from scratch; and that's not exactly cheap either.

Still, I'm open to rising the prices to double or beyond, but I don't think it should be more expensive than the legendary alternatives.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

• Heirloom armor, weapons, and back items include a new exclusive skin upon unlock, which can only be obtained by using the armory system.

Nothing sparklier than your average Black Lion Claim Ticket weapon skin, it's just an incentive to use the system.

Also, it works as a compensation as well, so you don't feel like storing ascended is a waste of money. If you later decide to store a legendary, at least you got a skin for storing ascended before it. Alternatively, we could force players to store at least 3 ascended pieces before being able to store the legendary piece, and just use generic ascended skins for the heirloom versions. That could be an interesting way to increase the storage price without asking for raw gold.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Finally we have this part

Any ascended or legendary equipment piece can be stored inside the Armory. Once stored, it can't be taken out. Stored equipment will appear directly inside the equipment tab, taking no inventory space.

Bag space stopped being relevant with the introduction of shared inventory slots and unidentified gear. Also, I'd wager the number of players carrying inventories full of gear for every specific situation is pretty low. Most players won't even notice the inventory size difference.

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:While a system could be sorted out to balance this, it would likely make Ascended gear prohibitively costly. For example I can farm Ascended gear from Living World Seasons to attain say, multiple Ascended backpacks far faster than the Legendary counterpart. Instead of having to farm PvP/WvW and Instanced PvE content I can casually run around an open map farming a set currency. This ease of access means that a player can pick the stats they know they will use, farm that and do so at a fraction the investment of a Legendary.

Well, we could reduce crafting costs for ascended armor, but then highly increase the storage costs. The end cost would be the same for crafted ascended equipment, but get more expensive for loot and vendor options.

Still, I see no problem at gear becoming more accessible. GW2 was never meant to have gear treadmills, hell, back at release legendaries were just skins, and ascended gear didn't even exist, exotic being the best rarity.

@Yuffi.2430 said:I appreciate you spent a lot of time designing your new system, and it is good to share ideas.However, at present the only differences between Ascended and Legendary items is that Legendary items look better (opinions may vary) and can change stats (which is useful). Your armory system reduces this to Legendary items have a different skin. So what's the point of having them at all?It's not hard to get ascended items, and these are already the highest stats you can get. Currently the only disadvantage for ascended items is if you want to have several different stat options on one character, where multiple sets take up space in your inventory/bank. Even then, it's much cheaper to buy more storage for this than to make a Legendary set.

Most people only make legendary weapons for the skin, don't they? Stat selection was only added years after release.

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Legendary equipment was originally supposed to be a prestige item. It had the same stats and utility as exotic armor. All the additional perks of legendary armor were added later. I don’t really care if it gets devalued or not.

I like this idea.

Same thing happened when the wardrobe was introduced, lot of people went mad since now you could reskin any weapon as legendary, making their weapons loss all their value and whatnot.

Then legendary weapons proceeded to spike in price anyway, since 99% of the people only cares about the skin.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).

• Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.

In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.

@"Zok.4956" said:In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.

That wouldn't work with the rules presented in the first post of the thread, once you put an item in the system you lose the ability to stat swap anymore. I tried to use the rules presented by the thread starter when calculating the cost

@"Lonami.2987" said:Also, I'd say the legendary skin compensates the gold difference. Plus, you don't get just the existing stats, but any future stats as well.

Yes but we've seen in the analysis that the bulk of the cost comes from the ascended materials and it's rather easy to estimate all future stats will also require around 50g to craft (for a short bow). There is a 500 gold difference between the legendary short bow and unlocking every single stat combination, this gives plenty of room for any "future" stats. As for the cost being because of the skin, that 500 gold difference is if you make all 35 different versions of the ascended short bow. The vast majority of players won't need more than 10, and I'm being generous here. With just 10 weapons, the "legendary skin" is valued at 1800 gold, minus any future stat combinations, which is quite excessive.

The prices I followed are based on getting a complete build stored. So, 6 armor pieces, 6 runes, 2-4 weapon slots, 4 sigils, 1 back item, 5 jewelry. Leaving infusions and underwater equipment out, that would be a total of 24-26 (let's round it to 25) items to store.

And this is what led to such terrible value for Legendary items compared to your system. Really different types of items have vastly different requirements in their acquisition, you can't have one price suits them all. I picked the weapon because it's the most expensive of them all, and things like trinkets are basically effortless/free. Your system completely destroys trinkets, as the legendary ones have a similar cost to legendary weapons, plus a LOT of achievement hunting, and the ascended versions are almost free. Same with back slot items, the legendary ones require both a lot of gold AND heavy achievement hunting, while you can get ascended ones for free finishing some achievements.

If you want to have a system like this, your proposal should have vastly different values for the different types of items. Different cost for weapons, armor, runes/sigils, trinkets and back item. A cost that is good for a Weapon, is gonna be absolutely terrible for a trinket.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Zok.4956" said:In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.

It was also written: "Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked."

So, you make the stat-changes in the mystic forge to "unlock" the stats before you put the item in the proposed storage system.

@Lonami.2987 said:

Then legendary weapons proceeded to spike in price anyway, since 99% of the people only cares about the skin.

I can assure you that most people don't get legendary items just for the skin.You're idea completely devalues legendary items to the point where it would be better to just get the stats you use on ascended items. Ascended items not only drop as rewards, a lot of the trinkets/backpacks can easily be farmed at 0 cost. Why would anyone ever make Transcendence when they could farm Borja once, and get 2 Amulets in an hour?

The whole reasoning behind the armory making Legendary items more convenient to use was to make them feel more valuable to earn than previous tiers.

@Zok.4956 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Zok.4956 said:In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.

Line 2 and 3 here dont support that you can stat change to unlock at all mate read the whole OPThis is what the OP means with unlock not the stat change a ascended in the mystic forge.

Storage process

Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from Miyani. Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.Use your storage kit on the piece of equipment you want to store. The selected piece will permanently disappear from your inventory.If the selected piece was already unlocked (item type + stat), the storage process will fail and the piece will remain in your inventory.

@maddoctor.2738 said:This essentially keeps the total price of the Heirloom Short Bow at less than 1800g (and with inflated values due to rounding) compared to a legendary weapon that costs almost 2300g. And remember this is for every single stat combination, players that need 5 or 10 of them (out of the 35 total) will pay significantly less.Meaning, your prices are way way too generous.

Price is probably the biggest problem after any technical issues.

Any alternative to legendaries that isn't cheaper than legendaries is almost useless. Their only usefulness is to avoid the need to acquire a GoB and GoE.On the other hand if the alternative is cheaper then legendaries are essentially reduced to an expensive skin.

The only way to avoid the issue is to not have any alternative ...

@Lonami.2987 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:Legendary gear has all existing stats, present and future, that functionality remains intact. In fact, if you're using multiple stats, getting legendary gear instead of ascended would be far more convenient (and in some cases, possibly cheaper as well).

• Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked.

• Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from
  Miyani
  . Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.

• Transmutation Charges
  have been removed from the gem store. Additional charges can now be purchased from Miyani in exchange of
  Spirit Shards
  .

@maddoctor.2738 said:

• Heirloom armor, weapons, and back items include a new exclusive skin upon unlock, which can only be obtained by using the armory system.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Finally we have this part

Any ascended or legendary equipment piece can be stored inside the Armory. Once stored, it can't be taken out. Stored equipment will appear directly inside the equipment tab, taking no inventory space.

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:While a system could be sorted out to balance this, it would likely make Ascended gear prohibitively costly. For example I can farm Ascended gear from Living World Seasons to attain say, multiple Ascended backpacks far faster than the Legendary counterpart. Instead of having to farm PvP/WvW and Instanced PvE content I can casually run around an open map farming a set currency. This ease of access means that a player can pick the stats they know they will use, farm that and do so at a fraction the investment of a Legendary.

@Yuffi.2430 said:I appreciate you spent a lot of time designing your new system, and it is good to share ideas.However, at present the only differences between Ascended and Legendary items is that Legendary items look better (opinions may vary) and can change stats (which is useful). Your armory system reduces this to Legendary items have a different skin. So what's the point of having them at all?It's not hard to get ascended items, and these are already the highest stats you can get. Currently the only disadvantage for ascended items is if you want to have several different stat options on one character, where multiple sets take up space in your inventory/bank. Even then, it's much cheaper to buy more storage for this than to make a Legendary set.

@Cleopatra.4068 said:Legendary equipment was originally supposed to be a prestige item. It had the same stats and utility as exotic armor. All the additional perks of legendary armor were added later. I don’t really care if it gets devalued or not.

I like this idea.

Ahh the lols

You say Legendary items are primarily desired for the skins, suggesting Legendary items have no other value.

Yet, you want to have Ascended gear able to Stat Swap and Gear Share, something that is unique to Legendary items.

I'll go out on a limb here to suggest that Stat Swapping and Gear Sharing (when it arrives) might be another, albeit tiny, reason that players work towards Legendary items.

I wonder why it’s called legendary armory and not ascended armory.