How much do you like or dislike the new gear/build templates? (scale of 1-10)

Has the new gear/build template made life better for you in WvW?Or has it been the opposite?

On a scale of 1-10, rate and share your thoughts on how life has changed!1 = Greatly dislike.10 = Greatly like.

EDIT: I was being unkind and I will stop doing that.

I dislike that they made my pve setup more ponderous to accessBut I love all the opportunities to make fun presented by the build-obsessed disliking the feature so strongly.

So firmly meh

They work but are very cumbersome

buggy, cant copy the items yet to share

It's nice that I don't have to manually select traits for my keyrunner anymore . . .

It has bugs and issues - one in particular with not automatically switching between modes, which Anet has acknowledged - but for what it does it has made my WvW life much, much easier. I can know easily swap my engie between roamer and healer and well... thats pretty much it. Got several characters set up as roamers or zerglings. I barely use third build slot and I have no use for the saved build things on the left.

The system on its own is exactly the same as we had before (1 automatic build per game mode, ie 3) with the extra bonus of an equipment loadout which saves alot of inventory space. If you used arcdps templates before, sure, complain about it. If you didnt, this is a better system even with the monetization.

Admitting i have used IT, ive also seen the enemy do IT

But its stupid to be 'able' to disengage and switch builds and get back in the fight...yeah i agree the stars swap on legendary are annoying. But to be fair Just at Spawn to use IT would be enough for me..

They are clunky and have some strange quirks such as unequipping Legendaries. The biggest problem is the limit and absurd cost to expand them. I often have 4-5 builds per class. I am all for paying for expanded access but 100 gold or thereabouts per saved slot (200 for equipment and build) is excessive.

I wish they worked more like GW the original where the template was the build and gear in one similar to metabattle or gw2skills. Even better if those build sites could create copy/paste templates for GW2 directly.

Ultimately they are functional and happy to have something because switching gear around was a massive inventory hog and time wasted.

@L A T I O N.8923 said:Admitting i have used IT, ive also seen the enemy do IT

But its stupid to be 'able' to disengage and switch builds and get back in the fight...yeah i agree the stars swap on legendary are annoying. But to be fair Just at Spawn to use IT would be enough for me..

My personal philosophy as a Necro that can't catch anybody is that if my opponent runs from me, especially to the point of out of combat, I consider it my win.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@L A T I O N.8923 said:Admitting i have used IT, ive also seen the enemy do IT

But its stupid to be 'able' to disengage and switch builds and get back in the fight...yeah i agree the stars swap on legendary are annoying. But to be fair Just at Spawn to use IT would be enough for me..

I mean IT depends for me what i run as a guard...i roam on firebrand (barely Any mobility) till meditrapper with trapper runes (huge mobility)

Mobility is allready really...really strong in this game even before this change and now its even worse

The issues I have with the templates themselves are minor and easy for me to brush off. I personally just think they really overpriced them. I don't have a problem paying money/gems for nice QoL features, I just can't justify it at their current price point.

Regarding functionality , from a WvW standpoint:

• Equipment Templates need to be swappable only in spawn / keep (as stated before launch), right now it can be done out of combat.---> allows people to run toughness-less vs condi builds

• Equipment /build templates need a default per mode as before the system : while being able to switch from group build to roaming and vice-versa is nice, having to do it manually when going from PvE/PvP is an extra step --- will be addressed apparently

• Equipment templates potentially don't have enough slots if you play condi and power in multiple gamemodes along with support builds. This doesn't even account for different weapons (i.e. axe+axe + mace+mace, vs hammer + greatsword or dagger+shield + greatsword).

• Legendary items are finnicky when removed from templates --- will be addressed apparently---> completely devalues WvW legendary armor for people that don't use multiple equipment stats on the same character , ideally you'd want to make use of ~4-5 stat combinations

• No way to revert or save changes to equipment template

• Equipment template tab's Stat totals (on hover) don't count upgrades/infusions and ascended trinkets' stats that come from what is supposed to be the jewel slot

• Being able to link people WvW builds to test or run is nice however. (It could really use a note about stat total or distribution & weapons used when the template was saved)

Monetization:Pricing is really high for build storage and build templates if you actually use more than 5 characters : even with 1x 300 gem build template each (to get power+condi/support separate from PvP/PvE) you're talking about over 1500 gems. Build storage is 500 gems for 3 spaces while a bank tab is 600 gems for 30 spaces with more data per space.

I like them for my Necro because I have enough builds to fill every slot. I don't need them on any other character because on most of them I have only one or two builds.

The ease of swapping back and forth is definitely nice and I enjoy being able to do so on the fly. It's faster and easier but as many have said, the price is absurd. I put off buying additional templates for quite a while. It wasn't until last week that I caved and bought them because I figured I only need them for one character anyway.

If some of the bugs are smoothed out and the price is reduced, I'd give it a 10/10 easy. In it's current form, I hesitate to even give it a 7/10, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't improved my WvW experience.

• No distinction between game modes (should have also given more equipment/build slots because of this)
• because of the above, although it is just a few clicks it can be very annoying
• You cannot copy equipment template by itself outside of game, you can only copy them between tabs
• Cannot paste equipment build to show others / let them preview (doesn't work for me at least)
• One big plus for someone like me who likes to use every single class/weaponset/build and the fact that I had not yet been able to craft legendary armor (I just recently made medium though few days ago), is it opened up my inventory of all the spare armor/weap/trinkets I had been storing. This is probably the biggest pro on my end, since it opened at least 20++ slots on all my characters
• On the fly build changing has it's own set of pro/cons, both useful and bad depending on how you look at it (I don't want to detail the bad because it will lead to abuse), but it's its own can of worms, although I am accepting of this fact
• There are a few bugs with it, for example on ranger it had a bug where it would override the primary pet of the other build template with the pet you currently had active, fbrand mantras going on cd (did not check mesmer), rev slots randomised etc, I am sure there were others but that's all I could think of off the top of my head.

So for me, overall I can't say it was more positive than negative - this outlook can change depending on how they work on things and adding fixes. Right now as I'm always doing with this game, I'm just "living with the changes".

The design is a 5/10.The monetization is a 2/10.The implementation is a 3/10.

The weighted value is leaning lower than an average since it is obvious that this is another one of those changes where it is clear that the monetization has taken the upper hand over the design. The design is purposely made worse in order to sell reparation of it. That goes in stark contrast to how ArenaNet used to be a company (a proper game development studio) that valued their product above their services.

A game development studio will look to create a good product that can be marketed and monetized.A scam/milking central will look to monetize piecemeal upgrades that makes a product somewhat playable.

To me it is obvious what templates are and that all the criticism is warranted.

It's perfect, now let's move on to something that matters.

@"EremiteAngel.9765" said:My personal philosophy as a Necro that can't catch anybody is that if my opponent runs from me, especially to the point of out of combat, I consider it my win.

You know, I thought the last word of that sentence was going to be "fault". Because being snagged by a Reaper is fatal.

They spent years to come up with crap. Makes me sad.

@"DemonSeed.3528" said:

• No distinction between game modes (should have also given more equipment/build slots because of this)
• because of the above, although it is just a few clicks it can be very annoying
• You cannot copy equipment template by itself outside of game, you can only copy them between tabs
• Cannot paste equipment build to show others / let them preview (doesn't work for me at least)
• One big plus for someone like me who likes to use every single class/weaponset/build and the fact that I had not yet been able to craft legendary armor (I just recently made medium though few days ago), is it opened up my inventory of all the spare armor/weap/trinkets I had been storing. This is probably the biggest pro on my end, since it opened at least 20++ slots on all my characters
• On the fly build changing has it's own set of pro/cons, both useful and bad depending on how you look at it (I don't want to detail the bad because it will lead to abuse), but it's its own can of worms, although I am accepting of this fact
• There are a few bugs with it, for example on ranger it had a bug where it would override the primary pet of the other build template with the pet you currently had active, fbrand mantras going on cd (did not check mesmer), rev slots randomised etc, I am sure there were others but that's all I could think of off the top of my head.

So for me, overall I can't say it was more positive than negative - this outlook can change depending on how they work on things and adding fixes. Right now as I'm always doing with this game, I'm just "living with the changes".

The equipment "copying" issue is likely a technical hurdle. Even the stat totals don't include upgrades ; ascended trinkets don't count their "jewel" stat bonuses. This can be easily checked by removing all items except for one trinket. There's been bugs reported here where the upgrades don't even apply stat-wise or function-wise after swapping to a template.

Build templates essentially amount to what is 3 traitlines and 9 numbers (since each traitline has 3 options). That's why they should have been far cheaper. Because builds are not accountbound or unique unlike items, the sharing feature is possible.

Equipment has "up to 60" unique modifiers , on top of that you have the skin (transmuted or otherwise) , item level (people often forget), accountbound/soulbound status (especially for exotics /rares/masterwork), vendor value if it is vendor sellable, and rarity:7x Armor pieces (including aquatic headgear)up to 6x Weapons (includes aquatic)7x Runes (if for some reason you use a different rune per piece)up to 8x sigils , despite aquatic weapons being 2 handed so technically only 61x backpiece2x rings2x accessories1x amuletup to 25 different infusions

If there really was an equipment "template" it would be the stat type for each slot (no need for rarity, level, or skin) and maybe a rune/sigil if the issues with upgrades are solved. If it were by profession then there would possibly need to be a check for elite spec as there is now (i.e. an equipped item that you can't use grays out that part of the skillbar). In its current iteration it's more of an equipment hotkey with optional storage. Internally it is labeled a "loadout". I wouldn't be surprised if the equipment template storage is actually a hidden bag of sorts in its current iteration: it explains why legendary items are so buggy in their attempt to share between templates.

The "no distinction between game modes" is my main concern. That means without spending gems on more slots all we basically get is 2 slots, not 3. But I think it's a great improvement though. Makes it easy to switch armor between roaming and group fights in WvW.

It's better than a case of the flu but significantly worse than a ham sandwich.

With the exception of every other patch breaking it, Arc DPS was FAR superior in functionality and it was free.

I like it. I never used the arcDPS templates so I now have QoL where before I had nothing. I can understand why people used to arc templates would be upset though. I just wish it worked with legendary gear.

Nothing but positives as far as I can see. Couple of bugs, but as a concept it's great. I'm a build monkey tho, so I would think that.

Edit; the only downside I can think of is that getting additional build slots is character specific, not account specific. Feels a bit like being milked for cash, that.

havn't done anything at all with them, certainly not after people say upgrades get dropped out of equipment.

It's NOT a TRUE Template system -- It destroys itself when I move my account bound gear to another toon on my account. :confused: