Build template review, how you can never pay a dime, and what Arenanet can change.

blambidy.3216 · October 11, 2019

At first I was furious with Arenanet of how they restricted veteran players from the game. Yes they did, however there is a work around, I have calmed down to give a bigger picture for people who play the game like me, or at least close to how I play the game. I am not elite like Teapot, Deaxon, Nova, Grimjack Etc, but I do have quite a lot of builds I use in different situations.

Lets get down to what Arenanet offered, Build template tabs, build equipment storage, and account wide build template tabs. Build template tabs, and equipment storage are character bound. Build templates are the skills and traits feature of swapping those on the fly. Build equipment storage is when you switch out armor for a different build, the armor you had on before switching will be put into the armory. Which is a great thing who use multiple ascended gear/legendary gear. Account wide storage are kind of like the build template tabs per character, however it is account wide. The difference of account wide build template storage, and the character build template is, you can have the account wide as a back up save for your builds that apply to every class. The only thing is the account wide can't use the build on a different class it was saved for. For example you can not save a warrior build, and try to apply it on your ranger. But if you have 2 warrior classes, you can apply it on your second warrior. You start with 3 per character build template tabs, 2 character equipment storage per character. And you get 3 build template tabs account wide, and for the first month its out, you get 1 pack that adds 3 more account wide build template tabs, so 6 account wide template tabs.

Lets get into how you can never pay a dime, that is the share feature. Which this feature honestly calmed me down, and I accepted what they have offered. I know 3 templates per character to start with is awful, but the fact that you can make many builds then paste it into docs, makes it alright. So to explain this share feature, you can copy every single build you make, and paste it into your docs on your computer, and you are not limited to saving on just gw2. Which means within the future snowcrows, vabbi builds, and probably Discretize will save these builds into their site, and you can copy their text builds and place it into your builds. Which this will lead you to never paying a dime, however, I will say for people like Sc, Ln, and that participate into raid tournaments, they will have to purchase character build tabs. Only because these tournaments are truly about time, and seconds matter. But say copy and pasting the build from pugging raids, or guild raids, or WvW, most likely you have enough time to copy from a site, or use your docs, and switch.

If say you don't want to use docs or sites to do that, the cheaper way would be to use account wide build tabs, since they come in 3 per pack. 3 per pack is better than 1 per character.

The feature they should alterStorage equipment will be most beneficial if it is account wide. why? The way of treating ascended and legendary gear will be much more beneficial, and it would make the game less grindy for all gear. For example you only need 1 legendary set per weight class and that would end armor grinding, and all you would need are runes. Instead of taking your armor off and placing into bank and putting it on another character, it will be much more beneficial of having an account wide armory. Surely the armory would be better even if you only gave us 1 equipment storage tab that is account wide. Then we buy the rest of the account wide equipment storage in the gemstore rather than 2 per character equipment storage. The way of having ascended/legendary armor sets switch to different classes would be far greater, and I think people would invest in the equipment storage tabs that are account wide rather than per character. Per character would be costy, but I already see myself not using it since I use multiple characters for only 3-4 sets of trinkets. For example the support that I use for my harrier trinkets are Healbrand, druid, tempest. I set those trinks aside in bank to pick them up later for when I use the class in different situations. If the armory could be account wide, and make 1 set of berserker trinkets to all classes, it would be much more beneficial, and it would much help the community. Hopefully in the future arenanet will change it to account wide if not, it will be a disappointment and not worth it. Why will it be not worth it? Because the people who used build templates with arcdps didn't use equipment storage, we used our bags, therefore we truly do not mind if our gear is in our inventory.

The feature they should remove The automatic saving feature. For example if you use the feature where you copy the text on docs or site and do not have anymore slots left, it will override the previous build you were using. So if your using the build externally, that build is most likely the back burner build rather than your high priority build. So you have to go back into the docs and reset your build to the high priority build that is mostly needed. Which makes it more time consuming then needed.Features they should addSave and overwrite feature. If they remove the automatic save feature, it will be much more beneficial to the community rather than the instant automatic save feature. If you change the build from the docs, you do not have to re save your high priority build again, all you do is just switch back the build rather than putting the correct build, and skills back to normal.

In conclusion I think the best feature out of it is the share feature, and that it isn't limited into gw2 and that it can be used externally. If this share feature was not there, then most likely I would've still been frustrated but since this feature is here, I think I can be satisfied. I do not agree that build traits, and skills should be monetized, but what's done is done. Since Arenanet truly is going there, account wide character build tabs would be more beneficial to the player base. If they do that, and they make character build tabs limit more than 6, it will be a good thing. However it is said that the price will be close to, or equivalent to bag slots, and account bank storage. I do not think character build tabs should cost as much as 400 gems. The only way for it to be worth 400 gems for skill and trait swaps is, it should be made account wide. So all your characters will have 1 added build tab slot Per purchase. Hope is still in there air, and build templates aren't fully finished yet, so hopefully adjustments will happen. Pvp templates are not done yet, we do not know when. Hopefully when regular templates are out, Arenanet will give a date of when the pvp feature will be added.

For the raid community I gave these examples of how I would prioritize my builds, I would include WVW however, I am not competitive into WvW so those types of builds I truly don't know besides a few. All of these examples could be changed for example if your support main, support builds should take priority over dps builds, and vice versa. If you run out of the account wide storage, then you put those into docs, and pop those from the docs when you actually use the build.

ElePower weaverCondi weaverMagi tempestIn account wide build tab/or DocsPower tempestHarrier tempestboon tempTemp oil kite

MesmerCondi miragePower chronoBoon/tank chrono

In account wide build tab/or DocsCondi/condi tank boon

NecroCondi scourgePower reaperHeal necro

RangerPower soulbeastCondi soulbeastdruid

In account wide build tab/or DocsCondi druidoil kiteSoulbeast hankitetank

EngiPower holoCondi holoHeal scrapper

In account wide build tab/or DocsCondi engi

ThiefPower DaredevilDiviner theifPower deadeye

In account wide build tab/or DocsCondi Daredevilthief tankheal theif

WarriorPower berserkerCondi BerserkerPower core warrior

In account wide build tab/or DocsShout warriorPower spell breaker

GuardianPower DhCondi FirebrandHealbrand

In account wide build tab/or DocsPower quickbrandCondi quickbrandhealbrand tank

RevenantCondi RenHeal renDiviner Ren

In account wide build tab/or DocsPower boonRev hankite

AgentMoore.9453 · October 11, 2019

I'll be curious to see what the system is like when it actually rolls out, but, basically, yeah. Being able to copy and paste codes into the game whenever you want makes buying more slots unnecessary unless you're invested in super serious fight-to-the-death, dishonor on your cow e-sports. It should be relatively easy to get the stats you need when you need them.

Nephalem.8921 · October 11, 2019

Sorry to disappoint you but you didn't get the point why people are upset. Most players I know want the gear swap feature the most.Finding the right pieces and remembering minmaxed builds or swapping runes on legendary takes lots of time. Traits are mostly changed within seconds and most builds use almost the same anyways but gear is usually completely different. Boon chrono alone has diviner, minstrel and semi toughness variants. Then there is power and condi and then there is condi boon and condi confusion chrono. All unique gearsets. Ranger is another extreme example aswell. Mine has 4sets currently to just cover the basics and I don't even play that class in wvsw. Engi also has wvsw builds so its condi, power, heal, wvsw roaming, wvsw healing -> 5 gear sets.Revenant has condi, diviner and full glass/marauder for wvsw -> another 4sets and some players have minmaxed boonduration for different team comps and fractal encounters which would be more than 10sets total.But you only get 2 gear tabs so i would have to buy 2-3 on most of my characters. Would cost me something between 3-5k gold depending on how expensive they will be if i convert gold to gems or multiple hundred euros if I buy them directly. You can't copy gear templates from strings aswell! If build tabs would include gearswaps and being mostly free after a one time account upgrade people wouldn't be so mad. The gear storage should be the main selling point and monetized thing but gear storage shouldn't be mandatory for gear swap behaviour. The devs probably intended this but it was scrapped for cashgrab reasons. Can't think of another reason why a simple "equip item a, equip item b..." list isn't included. Arc does exactly this right now afaik.

Kami.8342 · October 11, 2019

As Nephalem noted, what we (Hardcore Raiders) are upset about is how poorly the gear template system is designed.Its current implementation:

Significantly devalues legendary gear
Actively makes it harder / impossible to share your legendary gear with characters on your account. (1)
Provides no method of "restoring stats" to a set that has been modified for one-off circumstances
Does not provide enough gear tabs for people that want to include specialized variants of niche builds (2)
Provides significantly less value for gear sets that are just variations of another gear set (3)

(1) If you remove legendary gear from a character, all the templates on that character are broken, in addition the character that you move the gear to, has to have all their templates basically re-created(2) While I will agree that it is fair to not need another build tab for every 100 toughness benchmarks, having one with min toughness and one with max toughness is highly desirable.(3) Take for example Power Rifle Deadeye, and Power Bo Daredevil, the difference is a single weapon, while you may think "so what, it is just a weapon", think instead of builds that have only 6 or 8 differences in gear, do you really want to manually change these pieces every single time? Think of how many pieces you personally would think it not worth your time to deal with switching.The price of another gear tab will be the same if it is completely unique gear, vs recycling some gear for another tab.

Eloc Freidon.5692 · October 11, 2019

They really shouldn't be charging for account storage and focus entirely on the character tabs.

blambidy.3216 · October 11, 2019

@"Nephalem.8921" said:Sorry to disappoint you but you didn't get the point why people are upset. Most players I know want the gear swap feature the most.Finding the right pieces and remembering minmaxed builds or swapping runes on legendary takes lots of time. Traits are mostly changed within seconds and most builds use almost the same anyways but gear is usually completely different. Boon chrono alone has diviner, minstrel and semi toughness variants. Then there is power and condi and then there is condi boon and condi confusion chrono. All unique gearsets. Ranger is another extreme example aswell. Mine has 4sets currently to just cover the basics and I don't even play that class in wvsw. Engi also has wvsw builds so its condi, power, heal, wvsw roaming, wvsw healing -> 5 gear sets.Revenant has condi, diviner and full glass/marauder for wvsw -> another 4sets and some players have minmaxed boonduration for different team comps and fractal encounters which would be more than 10sets total.But you only get 2 gear tabs so i would have to buy 2-3 on most of my characters. Would cost me something between 3-5k gold depending on how expensive they will be if i convert gold to gems or multiple hundred euros if I buy them directly. You can't copy gear templates from strings aswell! If build tabs would include gearswaps and being mostly free after a one time account upgrade people wouldn't be so mad. The gear storage should be the main selling point and monetized thing but gear storage shouldn't be mandatory for gear swap behaviour. The devs probably intended this but it was scrapped for cashgrab reasons. Can't think of another reason why a simple "equip item a, equip item b..." list isn't included. Arc does exactly this right now afaik.

I completely understand that copying builds from text from docs or a site does not involve gear. I too have 3 sets of legendary armor that is each weight class. I too also have 5 builds on my mesmer, thief, ranger. However there’s 1 thing that people are not getting the bigger picture here of swapping the gear.

For example when copying the build from a site or docs, make sure your armor set has close or the same stats to go with the build, which I why I said the L.E.A.S.T priority builds will be left in the back burner. So for example swapping from heal ren spec to the hankite build in the back burner. The way to least swap out gear is to copy and paste those builds, why? Because heal ren, and hankite use close to the same gear. You don’t want to swap off condi ren build into a hankite build, or you have to do much clicking if you have legendary armor. However to say that heal ren has like 4-5 builds in the meta is unrealistic. There’s really 3 in the meta. Or 4 counting wvw.

Yes people are mad that the only reason is because of the number arenanet has given for our legendary armor, but to say it’s an enormous amount of time is truly a lie. (If) it’s high priority build, skills/traits gear should be easy to swap over by memory. I think people who say they have like 10 builds for a toon is kind of insane. 4-5 is more realistic. So saying that you need 3 builds for boon chrono is not realistic according to meta. You only need 2 builds, Actually you technically only need 1. Since tank chrono and boon chrono are same traits and skills, only thing you swap is gear. For example boon chrono is 1k toughness at about 50-60 % BD according to meta. If you tank as chrono on vg, kc etc. all you do is make 1-2 trinkets have toughness on it. You don’t need a build swap to switch out a couple of trinkets. It’s literally 10 secs.

For a person who has legendary armor, I’m honestly not mad about the reason other people are mad. I don’t care about other people with ascended being able to swap like legendary gear. I put my hard earned time and I will flash my armor everywhere I go. Yes the purpose of it has diminished but the credit for the community doesn’t change. There’s still things ascended doesn’t take credit for. No matter what ascended doesn’t say I did w1-4. Ascended doesn’t say they don’t have to ping L.I anymore. Ascended still makes them have to grind for armor pieces (if) arenanet adds another important stat like diviner’s.

Like I said in the beginning for people who (aren’t) joining mighty teapots tournaments, swapping traits, skills, gear isn’t hard to do. Specially if you use the class enough, you know them by heart and barely have to use build templates. But to say the (hardcore) players will mostly have to have them is truly a lie and a want. The only truly hardcore community are the people who join the raid tournaments and join gvg tournaments.

It’s truly just time of seconds to swap over and 99.9% of the time people will allow you to swap. Which is why in the raiding community there is a ready check. If your taking 5-10 mins in swapping gear it means you haven’t been using that gear often, and that you shouldn’t be using it into harder content yet.

I will say this, I agree with people that players should have infinite build tabs per character, or atleast 6 per character for free. I don’t believe tabs should have a price, I do believe storage should be set a price since It’s a whole new added space. But is Arenanet going to change? So if they (don’t) change. The share feature is our only solution.

Nephalem.8921 · October 11, 2019

So you are saying that the build template system is fine if you dont swap gear and use mostly the same between all builds? Doesn't that sound ridiculous.Boon and tank chrono swap more than 1-2 trinkets since they need 1250toughness when there is a fb and 1270 with a condi weaver and maybe even want a max toughness set for bad healers at SH for example.Swapping gear isn't hard to do yes but please tell me what is the point of such a system in the first place then.

@blambidy.3216 said:For example when copying the build from a site or docs, make sure your armor set has close or the same stats to go with the build, which I why I said the L.E.A.S.T priority builds will be left in the back burner.

You are really telling me that the system is fine as long as you use builds that use the same gear? What if you play more than condi + dps role in raids and maybe even do some wvsw once in a while? Anet could organize a big seal clubbing event and people would defend it saying it's good for culture or something and you don't need seals anyways.

blambidy.3216 · October 12, 2019

@Nephalem.8921 said:So you are saying that the build template system is fine if you dont swap gear and use mostly the same between all builds? Doesn't that sound ridiculous.Boon and tank chrono swap more than 1-2 trinkets since they need 1250toughness when there is a fb and 1270 with a condi weaver and maybe even want a max toughness set for bad healers at SH for example.Swapping gear isn't hard to do yes but please tell me what is the point of such a system in the first place then.
@blambidy.3216 said:For example when copying the build from a site or docs, make sure your armor set has close or the same stats to go with the build, which I why I said the L.E.A.S.T priority builds will be left in the back burner.

You are really telling me that the system is fine as long as you use builds that use the same gear? What if you play more than condi + dps role in raids and maybe even do some wvsw once in a while? Anet could organize a big seal clubbing event and people would defend it saying it's good for culture or something and you don't need seals anyways.

I agree with you that not everything works and it’s sad. I’m not going against your input. I do wish there were more slots so that legendary gear weren’t this problem of having to select every armor after switching from condi to power, Or condi to heal, etc. I mean I use a few classes and many builds, so I switch from my power dh, to healbrand almost every reset. I switch from condi soulbeast to Druid in fracs and raids. It’s not acceptable. But will Arenanet change the direction of the limits they have given?

I feel the pain of switching, I also did omega grind for this armor so I know how it feels. Since there is still 2 weeks and they haven’t finished the pvp aspect of build templates, hopefully there will be changes. But at its current state ascended armor is much easier to switch. Legendary armor should be given more flexibility than ascended. But what can we do? (Shrugs)

DeathIsVirtue.4105 · October 12, 2019

My view on this build template fiasco is that Anet has made a real cluster of something that could have been great. Like, my goodness, how can one part of a game legit have 3 levels of monetization??

In any case, my recommendations are as follows:

Build templates (both individual and account) should be free as paying for some strings of code to be saved (and that can be nullified with doc saves) is pretty ridiculous. Put a cap of like 20 per character plus 20 account then call it a day if you're worried about it taking up too much space on the server.
Equipment storage should be increased via gemstore (if something has to monetized ?) as they are comparable to extra bag slots, although I think we should get more than the 2 free to start. I do like your idea of these being shared over the whole account Blam. Like you said, it would be beneficial for those with multiple characters of the same weight class. It even might encourage others to grind for legendary gear (including me ?) because you could use it easily across multiple classes.
I'll be honest and say that I'm not sure how to make the equipment storage good for legendary users. If none of it was being monetized, they could have made it much like the account wardrobe feature where you added armor/runes/trinkets/ect to your equipment storage, except they kept the stats (or selectable stats for legendary) and they were permanently unlocked for the account (only for ascended/legendary, exotic is kept soulboud unless runes/sigils). That way when you are making your build, you just go through and select what pieces (and/or stats) you want for that particular build. I'm just not sure how to translate that over to a feature you have to pay for.

At the end of the day, I'm still pretty bitter they're charging anything for this. All we can really do is make the best of it though, as Blam has talked about, because Anet is pretty kitten about doing anything other than stocking the gemstore these days.

Trise.2865 · October 12, 2019

How are you reviewing a product you've never seen, let alone used? Are you breaking NDA?

DeathIsVirtue.4105 · October 12, 2019

@Trise.2865 said:How are you reviewing a product you've never seen, let alone used? Are you breaking NDA?

Considering they have talked about it, showed it off, and we all know it's going to be a 3 level monetization, I think we can safely call out parts that are bad about it. In my case, paying for this grinds my gears, hence why I commented.

Taygus.4571 · October 12, 2019

@Trise.2865 said:How are you reviewing a product you've never seen, let alone used? Are you breaking NDA?

We have seen it tho....there was a stream that gave a very clear and detailed workings of how build templates will work.

ButcherofMalakir.4067 · October 13, 2019

@blambidy.3216 said:
@"Nephalem.8921" said:Sorry to disappoint you but you didn't get the point why people are upset. Most players I know want the gear swap feature the most.Finding the right pieces and remembering minmaxed builds or swapping runes on legendary takes lots of time. Traits are mostly changed within seconds and most builds use almost the same anyways but gear is usually completely different. Boon chrono alone has diviner, minstrel and semi toughness variants. Then there is power and condi and then there is condi boon and condi confusion chrono. All unique gearsets. Ranger is another extreme example aswell. Mine has 4sets currently to just cover the basics and I don't even play that class in wvsw. Engi also has wvsw builds so its condi, power, heal, wvsw roaming, wvsw healing -> 5 gear sets.Revenant has condi, diviner and full glass/marauder for wvsw -> another 4sets and some players have minmaxed boonduration for different team comps and fractal encounters which would be more than 10sets total.But you only get 2 gear tabs so i would have to buy 2-3 on most of my characters. Would cost me something between 3-5k gold depending on how expensive they will be if i convert gold to gems or multiple hundred euros if I buy them directly. You can't copy gear templates from strings aswell! If build tabs would include gearswaps and being mostly free after a one time account upgrade people wouldn't be so mad. The gear storage should be the main selling point and monetized thing but gear storage shouldn't be mandatory for gear swap behaviour. The devs probably intended this but it was scrapped for cashgrab reasons. Can't think of another reason why a simple "equip item a, equip item b..." list isn't included. Arc does exactly this right now afaik.

I completely understand that copying builds from text from docs or a site does not involve gear. I too have 3 sets of legendary armor that is each weight class. I too also have 5 builds on my mesmer, thief, ranger. However there’s 1 thing that people are not getting the bigger picture here of swapping the gear.

For example when copying the build from a site or docs, make sure your armor set has close or the same stats to go with the build, which I why I said the L.E.A.S.T priority builds will be left in the back burner. So for example swapping from heal ren spec to the hankite build in the back burner. The way to least swap out gear is to copy and paste those builds, why? Because heal ren, and hankite use close to the same gear. You don’t want to swap off condi ren build into a hankite build, or you have to do much clicking if you have legendary armor. However to say that heal ren has like 4-5 builds in the meta is unrealistic. There’s really 3 in the meta. Or 4 counting wvw.

Yes people are mad that the only reason is because of the number arenanet has given for our legendary armor, but to say it’s an enormous amount of time is truly a lie. (If) it’s high priority build, skills/traits gear should be easy to swap over by memory. I think people who say they have like 10 builds for a toon is kind of insane. 4-5 is more realistic. So saying that you need 3 builds for boon chrono is not realistic according to meta. You only need 2 builds, Actually you technically only need 1. Since tank chrono and boon chrono are same traits and skills, only thing you swap is gear. For example boon chrono is 1k toughness at about 50-60 % BD according to meta. If you tank as chrono on vg, kc etc. all you do is make 1-2 trinkets have toughness on it. You don’t need a build swap to switch out a couple of trinkets. It’s literally 10 secs.

For a person who has legendary armor, I’m honestly not mad about the reason other people are mad. I don’t care about other people with ascended being able to swap like legendary gear. I put my hard earned time and I will flash my armor everywhere I go. Yes the purpose of it has diminished but the credit for the community doesn’t change. There’s still things ascended doesn’t take credit for. No matter what ascended doesn’t say I did w1-4. Ascended doesn’t say they don’t have to ping L.I anymore. Ascended still makes them have to grind for armor pieces (if) arenanet adds another important stat like diviner’s.

Like I said in the beginning for people who (aren’t) joining mighty teapots tournaments, swapping traits, skills, gear isn’t hard to do. Specially if you use the class enough, you know them by heart and barely have to use build templates. But to say the (hardcore) players will mostly have to have them is truly a lie and a want. The only truly hardcore community are the people who join the raid tournaments and join gvg tournaments.

It’s truly just time of seconds to swap over and 99.9% of the time people will allow you to swap. Which is why in the raiding community there is a ready check. If your taking 5-10 mins in swapping gear it means you haven’t been using that gear often, and that you shouldn’t be using it into harder content yet.

I will say this, I agree with people that players should have infinite build tabs per character, or atleast 6 per character for free. I don’t believe tabs should have a price, I do believe storage should be set a price since It’s a whole new added space. But is Arenanet going to change? So if they (don’t) change. The share feature is our only solution.

I need one gearset to play support chrono but I want all 28 I have now. Templates should be there so I DONT HAVE TO CHANGE GEAR BY HAND. Yet the thing anet made doesnt even cover diferent runes because those takes the most time to swap.

If gear could be stored in a chatcode thenno problem but in anets mind build is only traits and skills. So 6 maximum. And If I have to swap by hand 10 pieces then I can swap 16 since I have to remember whole gear anyway at that point.

I thing like remembering 14 pieces of gear, runes, sigil and 20 infusion slots on 28 diferent sets so you can swap in less then a minute is quite an achievment.Because no, each piece is not the same, and no, infusions are not the same either. Like some build have 13 mystical infusions and 5 mighty + diviner boots while other have only 8 mystical infusions but diviner legs and berserker boots (this is made up example, if I rememberd it exactly from had I wouldnt be upset about templates)

blambidy.3216 · October 13, 2019

@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:
@blambidy.3216 said:
@"Nephalem.8921" said:Sorry to disappoint you but you didn't get the point why people are upset. Most players I know want the gear swap feature the most.Finding the right pieces and remembering minmaxed builds or swapping runes on legendary takes lots of time. Traits are mostly changed within seconds and most builds use almost the same anyways but gear is usually completely different. Boon chrono alone has diviner, minstrel and semi toughness variants. Then there is power and condi and then there is condi boon and condi confusion chrono. All unique gearsets. Ranger is another extreme example aswell. Mine has 4sets currently to just cover the basics and I don't even play that class in wvsw. Engi also has wvsw builds so its condi, power, heal, wvsw roaming, wvsw healing -> 5 gear sets.Revenant has condi, diviner and full glass/marauder for wvsw -> another 4sets and some players have minmaxed boonduration for different team comps and fractal encounters which would be more than 10sets total.But you only get 2 gear tabs so i would have to buy 2-3 on most of my characters. Would cost me something between 3-5k gold depending on how expensive they will be if i convert gold to gems or multiple hundred euros if I buy them directly. You can't copy gear templates from strings aswell! If build tabs would include gearswaps and being mostly free after a one time account upgrade people wouldn't be so mad. The gear storage should be the main selling point and monetized thing but gear storage shouldn't be mandatory for gear swap behaviour. The devs probably intended this but it was scrapped for cashgrab reasons. Can't think of another reason why a simple "equip item a, equip item b..." list isn't included. Arc does exactly this right now afaik.