This week the Scrying Pool looks at how 500 Jewelcrafting could exist in Guild Wars 2.

About a year ago, I talked about ascended gear in relation to legendary weapons’ ability to change stats at will. At the time I thought that it would be cool if ascended gear had this ability, but that it shouldn’t be a default ability of ascended gear. Having the ability to select any stat by default is one of the benefits of legendary weapons which require much more effort to acquire than ascended gear.

Instead, I had the idea that players would be able to craft items that would grant the ability to select between the default stat of the gear and the stat tied to this new item. In the article, I suggested that it could be tied to each discipline, with weapon disciplines making versions that only worked on weapons, armor disciplines making armor versions and Jewelcrafting making a version for jewelry and backpieces.

In hindsight, that is a bit too complicated and this system could be simplified to 500 Jewelcrafting being able to make these items that could then be applied to any piece of ascended gear. These items, which I will codename Amplifiers (or Amps for short), would give 500 Jewelcrafting a very beneficial reason to be sought after. It would also not make other content less desired by replacing the method of ascended jewelry acquisition.

How would you make Amps? First and most obviously is 500 Jewelcrafting for crafting the actual Amps. At some point along the path to 500, maybe at 450, 475, or even just at 500 Jewelcrafting, players would be able to craft new Ascended Salvage Kits. Currently it is impossible to salvage ascended gear, which can be problematic for some players who run fractals frequently and have stockpiles of ascended rings that they don’t use.

Ascended Salvage Kits would be one time use. I haven’t thought about what would be required to craft them, but you craft one, you use it once and it is gone. The benefit to this however, is that they could stack unlike other salvage kits. When used on ascended gear, it would break them down in much the same way as exotics with probably a few common T6 mats such as Orichalcum Ore with the potential of salvaging some ectos and any upgrades or infusions currently slotted in the gear. In addition to this is the possibility to gain an Amp Core. With 500 Jewelcrafting, you could make an Amp Core into an Amp.

The Amp Core and Amp would both be tied to the same stat combination of the original item that was salvaged. So breaking down a Berserker ascended ring has a chance to give you a Berserker Amp Core which in turn can be crafted into a Berserker Amp. Amps could then be used on items to add their stat combination to the list of available stats on the ascended gear. Whenever outside of combat, players would then be able to swap to any of the unlocked stats on the item much like is done currently on legendary weapons.

This Amp system would give even more benefit to content such as fractals and guild missions. Got an Ascended Weapon Box to drop with a stat you don’t want (such as Healing Power)? Now that weapon isn’t useless as it can be upgraded to a stat you do want. Players could go get rings from fractals or the laurel merchant that have the stat they want, salvage until they get an Amp Core and upgrade that useless weapon into a useful one.

The true benefit would come from classes that use multiple stat sets for different builds, giving them the option to only need one set of gear. It doesn’t entirely cut out the need to have multiple gear sets however, as the effort of switching stats around and needing different runes or sigils would still warrant other gear. For many players and jewelry however, a system like this could be huge.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams is intrigued by this Ventari legendary fellow.

This week something got finished! This week I finished the Crucible of Eternity dungeon collection, which I had been working on by completing the reward track in PvP. Next up in PvP is Sorrow's Embrace, but I am missing a lot of that collection and won't be done anytime soon. What are you working on while we wait for Heart of Thorns?

If you have a question for me or a topic you would like to see talked about here, leave a comment below. You can also tweet your question and topics to me on twitter @MattstaNinja. Also, check out my site Mattsta.Ninja that focuses on guides and more for Guild Wars 2.