Official Feedback Thread about Build and Equipment Templates

[MisterDapper.5984]

So for 4 equipment templates on my guardian it's 2k gems? Ignoring the ludicrously expensive templates and using chat codes to save resources...The builds are limited to 6 across all game modes, but just for raiding you have DH, Rune of the Thief DH, healbrand, condi FB, Condi Quickness FB, Power quickness FB, 3 FB tank builds for 1250, 1500 and 1750 toughness. So 9 builds in total. And that's not including if I wanted to WvW.

At most this should have cost $30 for full access to this feature. Maybe a little more, but not 10k+ gems for builds you can have across 9 characters.

[Balthzar.3807]

@TheWhiteWolves.3076 said:First impression feedback from me would be, can you all the keybindings for build/equipment templates to not be exclusive, I'd like to be able to set both build template 1 and equipment template 1 to the same keybind, e.g. Ctrl + 1

just make a macro that does it as it does not violate the macro policy so is completly legit but that being said its not character bound the hot key it is game wide

[Xiahou Mao.9701]

The biggest issue I have with the templates is that they aren't really templates, they're loadouts. I had hoped that when I saved a template, it would be saved and able to be recalled by pressing whatever hotkey I assigned it, but that isn't the case. Any changes I make to whatever build or equipment I happen to be using at the time actively edits whatever template I'm on, changing it until I manually go back and edit it again. That's not really how templates are supposed to work. The only way around that without doing all that manual fixing is to store the template I want to preserve in Build Storage to retrieve later, and that only works with the build part, it has no effect on any equipment changes I might make.

If it could be fixed so that whatever build and gear you're actively using is saved separately from your templates, so you can easily revert to the template whenever you want to, that would be a big improvement to the system and make me more inclined to buy extra slots.

[Cheeky Git.4632]

24 toons on main account, 52 toons over all 5 accounts...

Equipment templates on my main alone would cost in the region of £480 for what is essentially convenience. Even if i limited to 1 character of each of the classes, it's prohibitive.

I'll stick to the old fashioned method of swapping kit.

Seems to be a massive mismatch between what ANET thinks the players can afford and what they can actually afford which is a shame, as templates in GW1 were brilliant. And free.

However, now that the templates update has been completed, perhaps the dev team could work on the colourblind mode that was promised since Launch of GW1. Or use the income generated from the template gems to recruit Devs who are capable of coding it.

[BatelGeuce.3591]

I am sure it was said before but I feel like I need to say it myself, please make it possible to bind one gear and one build template to a single key. Or maybe it would be better to link them in the order they take in tabs (1-1, 2-2, 3-3) which would still require only one key to swap them :)

[Madja.1369]

I'm not a fan. Not only do you have to choose both equipment and build instead of being able to combine for one keybind to switch, but you also have to unlock extra per character instead of account-wide. You now have to manually switch build when you enter PvP and you have to sacrifice a build slot for it and WvW. Legendary gear also feels useless and maybe even slightly worse, as you can't have separate transmutes on them.This would also have been a great opportunity for getting more alts played as you could have made equipment builds account-wide if they're ascended/legendary gear. Having to move all my gear through the bank every time I feel like playing an alt just makes me lose interest in playing them, so I get bored of the game.

[ugrakarma.9416]

Im very fine with the system, i had only 1~3 character of 12 that will need equipment template.I like maintain things very simple: 2~3 alts of WvW, so they had a WvW equipment, and the rest is pve equipment.Also same for builds, i had only toon for pvp, the one almost i change builds..

I find also fair charge the guys that use 14558778 builds....., want complex things? pay for it.

The only complain i had is that build-template interface seems too prone to misclicks but i will try get used to it.

[MoXAriApph.3650]

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:Im very fine with the system, i had only 1~3 character of 12 that will need equipment template.I like maintain things very simple: 2~3 alts of WvW, so they had a WvW equipment, and the rest is pve equipment.Also same for builds, i had only toon for pvp, the one almost i change builds..

I find also fair charge the guys that use 14558778 builds....., want complex things? pay for it.

The only complain i had is that build-template interface seems too prone to misclicks but i will try get used to it.

"want complex things? pay for it."We literally can't. There's a limit of 6 templates for equipment and builds.

[Curunen.8729]

From someone who only has 1 character and never used ARC:

• Ideally it would have been nice to have 3 Equipment templates as standard, as this is by far the most important time saving feature. The Build Templates are convenient but very easy to change traits and skills compared with changing Equipment stats/runes/sigils/weapons etc - this can be a long process with the way the UI is set up so the Equipment Template should be the main feature being pushed by offering an additional free slot upgrade compared with the rest of the system.
• For me the build storage is kind of irrelevant, so the freebie from the Gemstore is not useful for me. I would have found a third Equipment template far more useful.
• It should be possible to link a Build Template with an Equipment Template and hotkey on a single button press, as they often go hand in hand especially with different weapon traits, etc. It is not the most efficient to have to change them separately.
• I doubt I'd ever be spending any gems outside of a sale on these, and can sympathise with those who have many characters and play different builds in different modes as to how much they would have to shell out compared with ARC in the past. I am fortunate it doesn't affect me.

Overall a welcome system, looking forward to see how it continues to refine.

[Luindu.2418]

I don't expect too much:

• some free storage: we got it with equipment templates, but limited and overpriced
• some "rapid slots" with a button interface, but only have the option to keybind.
• the option to share legendaries between characters without modifying the equipment template.
• option to (local) save all variations of builds gw1 build templates but the build template storage is more like a bad joke (500 gems for store 3 long chat codes , not even deserve change gold for gems)

As many others says before Clunky, overpriced and very limited

[Samaruis Vulcan.7413]

I'm sorry, this is unacceptable. Arena Net, Are you wanting us to Chastise you? THIS SYSTEM WAS ALREADY DONE BETTER IN THE PREVIOUS GAME! How could you mess this up? You knew what we wanted! Now you're low blowing us like Bethesda! Selling more Game Play Features THAT SHOULD OF BEEN IN THE BASE GAME! I've been playing this Franchise since 2007 and this is insulting. I will not be supporting nor will I be using this system. Not like there is much options left to choose from especially after you streamlined the build templates in heart of thorns.

I think I'll be staying on Destiny 2 for a bit longer. They seem to know how to please a fan base for the time being. Good Luck trying to make your game into Guild Wars 76. This was such a bad time to release something so Greedy.

[Ashantara.8731]

Equipment Storage was the worst idea ever. :s

I ran into a bug that has created an invisible duplicate of a legendary upgrade of mine. Sure, cool, I have one more upgrade to use now, but it's a possible exploit! And it shows that your method of destroying and recreating items whenever they are dragged between the inventory, the equipped gear and the equipment storage is a bad solution, obviously. :-1:

Edit: Not a bug after all but just a very confusing way of handling things. Oof.

[Hackysac.3089]

For equipment tabs:

1. Add a new “Defaults” tab as the first tab before the equipment tabs. Have every game mode as it’s own drop down on this tab (I.e. open world, pvp, wvw, raid, fractal, etc..). User selects which equipment tab they want to default for the corresponding game modes drop down. Upon entering said game mode the equipment build assigned in the drop down is used.

2.Next to each game mode drop down on this tab should be a “default build” drop down. User ties one of the builds from the build tab to the game mode. This is used upon entering said game mode.

3. Add a new legendary equipment tab(s) after the equipment tabs. These are for legendary gear/weapons, are account wide, and show up in new “Defaults” tab as selectable as well. The user can default the stats on legendaries separately per legendary tab.

4. Since most people probably do not have a full set of legendary. Allow character bound non legendary equipment that is non account wide to be added to legendary tab.

[Koen.1327]

as someone who plays all 3 gamemodes I'm mostly annoyed by the fact that builds don't switch automatically anymore, so it's a straight downgrade

Cons:-doesn't work with pvp build, have to switch traits, equipment, followed by amulet, runes and sigils in the pvp build screen now considering weapons are stored and NOT SELECTABLE in the pvp build selection screen. It's faster to manually change like before and not use the templates at all, except that I can't do this on characters I pve or wvw with

-there is no such thing a build template, equipment and TRAIT/UTILITY templates are seperated - not a huge thing but linking them into an actual build template would be a qol upgrade for me

-only 2 equipment tabs and 3 build templates, but since it's just an unsplit of templates in different gamemodes all you gain is 1 extra equipment tab. Since weapons get hardlocked into the template and I can't switch in the pvp build rendering it useless anyway.

-too expensive, i'd rather get another character slot with decicated build. Can't milk me anyway

Pros:-i already had multiple mesmers which had dedicated pvp builds to them, now i can switch traits and utilities even more (still have to manually swap weapons, amulet and sigils though). Not a huge improvement especially considering i don't have multiple chars of every class.

-i find it useful on my ranger which i pretty much solely use for open world pve now. I never raided because switching was too much of a hassle, it will remain like that because it's only 3 build templates and 2 equipment tabs, but for open world pve it's enough (huge con for raiders i'd say in general)

[Alerius.3048]

The officially supported version should be better than the free arcDPS version. It did not suffer these per character limitations.The officially supported version should be better than NO version, it is not. At least before this I had pre-populated PvP and WvW builds.The officially supported version should be better than the GW1 version!! It is not.This is a rather transparent money grab, to the point of taking away previously included content and re-releasing it as paid content.

Not nice.

[Aplethoraof.2643]

Well, this at-least explains why ArcDPS build templates were being banned.

They were planning on nickel-and-diming with more micro-transactions.

Inb4 they start selling DPS meters on the gem store and ban the current ones.

[azurerogue.9240]

Pretty frustrated with the templates and I want to add my reasoning to the pile:

Legendary Armor

I take breaks from the game every so often (usually a few months or so at a time) and when I come back the PvE Raid and WvW metas have often changed. That's fine, though it can sometimes be expensive to keep up. I have Heavy legendary armor so since my most recent return I'd enjoyed focusing on Revenant (Alacrity Renegade, Heal Renegade, Power Herald), Warrior (Condi DPS, Condi BS, Power BS, Spellbreaker), and Guardian (Celestial FB, Minstrel FB, Power DH) across my two preferred game modes (Raids and WvW).

This was great because I could, using the previously available ArcDPS Build Templates, keep common trinkets on each of the characters (Diviner/Harrier/Berserker on Rev, Viper/Berserker on Warrior, and Cele/Minstrel/Berserker on DH) and could save a lot on making new armor sets by sharing the legendary armor between them. This was as simple as unequipping, tossing the 6 armor pieces in the bank, swapping characters, re-requipping and then loading my build. Even though I've moved GW2 to my HDD from my SSD this process was generally about a minute of time.

With the new system if I want to share my legendary armor across characters I literally can't use equipment templates because I have to remove the save customization from the armor to get it back into my inventory so I can put it on another character. So now I have to choose between using equipment templates and shelling out a bunch of gold/resources to make a bunch of new ascended heavy sets or just keep going as I have been since October 15th and doing it all by hand. I'll probably go with the latter - so having legendary armor is a disincentive me to pay into the new system (which is overpriced and shouldn't be character-level unlocks).

Not Templates

The equipment templates are...not templates. Any small change I make is automatically applied to the template and not just to my current gear. If I want to tank and need to swap one pieces to a toughness piece that permanently changes whatever tab I'm currently on. And because I have to be on a tab that means I can't just reload my original build when I'm done tanking (or whatever the reason is I needed to make a change). Please add a save/load button for each template so I can make small changes and not have them persist. I shouldn't have to have a whole separate build for a single weapon or stat swap on a single item, and a "template" system shouldn't automatically adjust the template because I made an in-the-moment change.

Saved Space

For those of us with enough different items for various builds that we get notable amounts of saved space from this system, we've already paid you to deal with that. My Elementalist carries three armor sets, two staffs, dagger, warhorn, and three sets of trinkets. I paid for extra bag space to accommodate this mess of items in the 7 years it took for build templates to be introduced to the game. Now the pricing model for equipment templates is based on the space it saves me, but I don't need that extra space because the only reason I paid for the bag slots was because of the extra equipment. I doubt I'll ever fill all that extra space because I bought enough that I was only rarely encountering "inventory full" issues before build templates were announced (or, at least, before there was any indication of when they'd ever be released).

So now I paid once to have the space to carry this extra stuff and now I'm paying again to have a bunch of extra space. I appreciate the intention here - but I think pricing these template expansions as if they're a major convenience to the people most likely to use them is basically just gouging us.

The End

[Fenella.2634]

@Samaruis Vulcan.7413 said:THIS SYSTEM WAS ALREADY DONE BETTER IN THE PREVIOUS GAME!Even worse, it was done better even in GW2 until yesterday.

Can we please get the separations between game modes back? Playing PvE, PvP and WvW with the same character is now clunkier than before. I see no improvement there.All three templates are immediately taken up just by this. No variation possible.

I have not used third-party build templates and I have stayed away from the criticism beforehand, because I really had a bit hope that this would improve the gameplay at least slightly. It does not. It's quite disappointing.

[sata.6321]

Okay, my 2 cents on it:I wish I could change alter PvP Equipment using templates, I hate having to have multiple characters of the same class to fully swap specs quickly (rifle to prot holo, among others). Being able to get the skills together is nice but I just want it all to be under 1 click.Also the whole 2 equipments is super annoying, as mentioned a million times (and you knew it would be ANet)have build autoswapping still would be very nice. I don't wanna hafta think about checking my specs before I do fractals and so forth.

[Pifil.5193]

My first impressions aren't favourable.

I think that carving build templates into traits and skills and equipment templates was a massive mistake. A build is made of three elements in GW2: traits, skills and equipment (including upgrades). A build no longer makes sense when you remove one of those three elements. While that's especially apparent when you use an elite spec weapon and switch your traits to a build without that elite spec trait line it's also pretty obvious in other areas, just equip a healing build with berserker equipment, a staff build with no staff and so on. Those builds just don't work without the right combination of traits, skills and equipment.

The cost is ridiculously high. You're charging 500 gems for 3 account build slots. That's 500 gems to store less than 300 characters in what amounts to a glorified clipboard. The build and equipment templates are similarly overpriced. The build templates cost 300 each for the luxury of basically having a hotkey and not needing to paste in a build link and equipment template costs more than the cost of a bag slot and a 20 slot bag for the same approximate storage.

The build templates should be changed to include and remember all three elements (traits, skills and equipment) that are required for the build. It should record the choices made when setting up the build so that equipment can be transferred to other characters without having to recreate the build template from scratch later on. Saving and reloading a build should require a button push. Just tweaking traits or skills shouldn't change the saved build.

If you want to you could still sell equipment "bags" that can only contain soul bound and account bound equipment and maybe upgrades but they shouldn't impact the actual builds, just tidy away equipment so it's not clogging up our main inventory.

The account build storage should be free and store at least 100 builds.

I've said it before but it seems that the monetization came first and the functionality second here. I won't be spending any money on these and it's put me off buying gems for anything else right now.

[Trise.2865]

@Saniyah.1984 said:

@Trise.2865 said:

@Saniyah.1984 said:Equipment templates does not look for stuff in your bank or what is on other characters.

Why would it? That character doesn't

have

those items to equip.

Because i can't shared legendaries like this

Could you screenshot the save button please?

You can't use legendaries that are equipped to other characters anyway?

Just click a slot.

[Decado.9304]

Its a decent start however some major issues:

1. Too few build templates for a start
2. Should have been 3 equipment templates to match the 3 build templates, 2 & 3 makes no logical sense
3. No option to lock templates from changes.
4. Screws up legendaries by dropping out the sigils and infusions
5. Character bound build templates rather than account bound
6. No way to link armour and build templates and hotkey them
7. Too much of a cash grab
8. Too much of a cash grab
9. Too much of a cash grab
10. Too much of a cash grab

You came up with a fairly decent system which would improve QoL and then totally kittened it into the sea by trying to gouge as much cash out of people as possible.

A charge per account bound amour template I could understand a bit since you are getting free character storage expansion and would probably buy the odd upgrade or 2 for those character that have 3/4 sets of armour but I cannot see how you justify 3 build templates then 300gems a pop for any more. Should have been at least 10 or so to start with on each character then maybe I could see you being able to charge for extra, but thats a small maybe considering GW1 had unlimited build templates - just checked for nostalga and mine had 1345! - and although im not suggesting that amount, you should at least have had a usable number free at the start.

[Shailyn Slay.7234]

I'm usually pretty happy with the stuff Anet delivers, this time not so much (though I'm also not upset about this patch).
I'm also pretty sure all of these points have been raised already, but I do have some suggestions on how they might be tackled in a sensible way.

1) No linked sPvP / WvW builds
This is probably what annoys me most with this new system, I didn't really have time to play yet, but I'm absolutely sure I will at some point play PvP with my PvE build because I forgot to switch (saved) builds, which makes this definitely a QoL downgrade.I see two ways to fix to turn this issue around:a) make it possible to set one build template as default for each game mode. This is essentially like the old system (so it shouldn't be to much work for the devs), with the change that we can set & unset the links ourselves.b) Introduce 'default' builds (see also below), that are separate for each game mode and are auto loaded once you change game modes

2) No non-template buildsThe fact that we can't change skills or equipment without it affecting the saved templates is also almost anti-QoL. I like the suggestion of introducing a 'current' build (and equipment load out) on which all manual changes are applied - loading a saved template is then just a quick way to quickly change lots the whole current build.This should be pretty easy to implement for build templates, though I can see problems when applying it to equipment (the Devs stated that they didn't want to touch the code for Inventory and loading a template with i.e. different weapons then the currently equipped ones would require those moving back to the inventory). I still think this can work though since it will only require the code place items into inventory (kinda like auto-loot) but never retrieve them. (Only tricky part is to check where an equipped item, that is part of a template, goes when its replaced in the current load out).

3) Legendary gear, Item sharing & PricingThese are points I'm personally not very affected by, so I don't care to much, but I think most complaints are valid here (with the current implementation).My suggested way of adding 'default' build and equipment load outs might even make item sharing between characters easier (since you just need to save a set of character bound items to immediately 'drop' all equipped ones into your inventory - doesn't enable saving templates for multiple characters but that was never possible anyway). With such improvements I also think the current pricing would be relatively fair.

[Vanessa.1906]

@krzysC.1267 said:Great QOL feature and I have seen little to no bugs.

With that I have to say I am very disappointed with the monetization and limitations of the feature.The cost to fully unlock all slots per character is 2900 gems (over 35$ USD) and that's not even counting the account wide build storage.The limit on how many build and equipment tabs could be forgiven, but the pricing is unlike anything I have seen in the gem store.I will not be purchasing any additional slots for this system until there are changes to the monetization.I love this game but this is too much ANet...

no bugs?You can dupe infusions with this, giving you unlimited amount of infusions to use.You can lose your upgrades in certain scenarios.If you change weapons for prestacking etc, all of your upgrades get desloted forcing you to reequip them.

[nrrpxl.7692]

For me it is a slight loss of QoL because:I play mostly wvw and a bit pve. So I have used one build in wvw and another one in pve as the game provided automatically. I didn't have to change anything at all switching between game modes (except maybe weapons).Now I have to actively choose another build template every time when I'm switching between wvw and pve maps. Yes it is only a few clicks but I have to remember to do them! That's annoying!This is easy to fix. The game just should remember which build template (and equipment template) was switched on the last time I was on a pve/wvw/pvp map and switch automatically back to it when I enter the game mode again. Same QoL as before plus the additonal comfort of the templates.