Not sure how I feel about this. Another system coming to the game (did anybody ask for this?) and it does not seem like ArenaNet has fully thought it through one month before it goes live.
I was hoping for a change that makes gearing for different/multiple builds more accessible.
I don’t see why we need runes at all in the new system. Just put the stats on the usual armor pieces and we are good to go. Everyone will use the same astheir armor anyway.
Or imagine gear just had attribute points (item budget) which you could spend on stats as you like. Obviously this would invalidate stat sets (pseudo content) entirely and stat swapping on legendary gear, too. But why not let the majority of players enjoy the build craft meta game instead of just a tiny fraction which has full legendary gear, runes and sigils?
I mean with a large enough set of (Viper, Celestial, Marauder, Berrserker/Assassin) account bound armor, weapons and trinkets (maybe a few legendary ones) you can mix and match the optimal stat set for pretty much any open world build anyway. But it is very tedious and no fun.
This would definitely be a drastic change, that would invalidate alot of things. I would rather see this as a concept for a potential gw3 .
… or Guild Wars Reloaded, since GW1 already had that system.
The GW1 system was still very different from what you described. You could spend points on skill groups, rather than increasing raw damage or crit chance.
GW1 had way fewer attributes to spend points on, but if you did, you would increase the damage and crit chance of certain weapons or the power (damage, healing, duration, …) of certain abilities. What I was mainly referring to (and what I would like in GW2, too) was the principle of freely spending a budget (with increasing cost) on attributes which improve certain offensive or defensive abilities. Anytime you want outside of combat.
GW1 also has/had Runes and Insignias which require(d) (perfect) salavage kits to move around and hence are/were less flexible. But this has/had less impact on your build than the distribution of attribute points.
Originally GW2’s trait system also had stat increases baked in, but this was later removed and more attributes (precision, ferocity, concentration, expertise) have been added.
So why not replace Stat Sets, Runes and Sigils as they are now with freely distributable attribute points and let Relics and whatever the successor of Sigils will be have unique (not stat-related) effects?
