Build and Equipment Templates are live in Guild Wars 2 as of today’s patch, and the community is experiencing the full emotional range simultaneously — relief that they finally exist, and genuine frustration about what they cost.
Both reactions are valid. Both need to be said out loud.
We’ve been playing with the new system since the patch notes went live, and we want to give you our honest read: where it works, where it falls short, and what we think ArenaNet needs to change. This is an opinion piece. We’re going to state things plainly.
One important note upfront: we know this is a sensitive topic in the community right now. We’re going to be direct about the problems. We’re also going to resist the framing that this feature is somehow a betrayal or evidence of bad faith. It’s a complicated situation, and it deserves a complicated analysis.
Key Highlights
- Build Templates store full trait and skill loadouts and can be swapped without visiting a trainer
- Equipment Templates store complete gear sets, including rune and sigil configurations, on a per-character basis
- Both systems are server-side — accessible on any device, no add-ons required
- Default slots per character: 2 Build Templates, 1 Equipment Template free; additional slots purchased from the Gem Store
- Additional slots cost ~200 gems per build slot, ~300 gems per equipment slot per character — costs stack per character, not account-wide
- ArcDPS build template functionality was disabled by its developer upon this patch’s launch to comply with ArenaNet’s terms of service
What We Don’t Know Yet
- Whether ArenaNet will adjust pricing based on community feedback
- Whether account-wide pricing options are being considered internally
- How this decision plays out long-term for players with 20+ characters
- What the internal revenue targets driving the pricing model actually are
The ArcDPS Situation: Let’s Be Fair About It
Before anything else, we need to address the thing most people are actually upset about: ArcDPS.
For the majority of active GW2 players in endgame content — fractal CMs, raids, high-level WvW — ArcDPS has been the de facto build template solution for years. It was free, functionally unlimited in slot count, and built by a community member who understood exactly what players needed.
As of today’s patch, the developer of ArcDPS — deltaconnected — has voluntarily disabled the build template portion of the plugin. This is their choice, not a ban or a forced removal. They made the call that maintaining competing functionality with an official ArenaNet system wasn’t where they wanted to be.
We respect that call. It’s the developer protecting themselves legally and professionally. But the practical effect for players is: you woke up this morning with unlimited free build slots, and now you have two.
That transition is jarring. It’s worth acknowledging that the frustration people feel isn’t irrational. Players genuinely had something they valued, and now it costs money to have something equivalent. That’s a real change that affects real people, and “it was a third-party tool so you were never really entitled to it” is true but also somewhat beside the emotional point.
What the Official System Does Right
Here’s where we risk getting dismissed as ArenaNet apologists, but we’ll say it anyway: the official Build Template system has real advantages that ArcDPS never could have.
Server-side storage is genuinely better. Your builds live on ArenaNet’s servers. They can’t be broken by a game patch. They don’t require a working installation of a third-party plugin. They’re accessible if you log in on a different machine — a library computer, a friend’s PC, whatever. For players who have ever lost build data because ArcDPS broke after an update, this is not a small thing.
Equipment Templates change how Legendary gear works. This is the part of the system that’s getting undersold. Legendary armor and weapons have always had the abstract benefit of allowing stat swapping — but without a way to save and quickly apply different stat configurations, the practical benefit was limited. Equipment Templates make that benefit real. A full set of Legendary Triumvirate armor becomes meaningfully more valuable now than it was yesterday, because you can store a power build, a condi build, and a support build in three equipment slots and flip between them at will.
The integration with the default UI is cleaner than any overlay. No alt-tabbing. No plugin conflicts. No “this mod might get you flagged” anxiety that’s always existed faintly in the background of ArcDPS usage.
These are real things. We want to name them before we get to the problems.
The Pricing Model Is the Problem
Let’s be direct: the default state of two build slots per character is not enough for any player who engages seriously with more than one game mode.
A player who raids, runs fractals, and plays WvW on the same Guardian needs, at minimum, a power DPS build, a support Firebrand build, a solo open-world build, and a WvW roaming build. That’s four build slots, right out of the gate, on one character. The default is two. Slots three and four cost gems — approximately 200 gems each.
At current gem store rates, that’s roughly 800 gems to bring one character to a functional state for a player who plays multiple game modes. At the current gold-to-gem conversion rate of approximately 30 gold per 100 gems (varying daily — check the TP for current rates), that’s significant real-money-equivalent spending just to reach feature parity with what ArcDPS provided for free.
The per-character pricing compounds the problem. An account-wide unlock — even at a higher price — would be a defensible model. You pay once, all your characters get the same number of slots. The current implementation charges per character, which means a player with ten characters pays ten times the cost of a player with one. That’s not how most players think about their account, and it creates a cost curve that punishes veteran players who have broad character rosters.
This is the specific design decision ArenaNet needs to revisit.
A Constructive Wishlist
We’re not going to end this piece with “ArenaNet bad, this sucks.” That’s easy to write and doesn’t help anyone. Here’s what we actually want to see:
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Account-wide slot expansion options. Give us the ability to buy additional slots that apply across the entire account, not per character. Even at a higher price point, this is more palatable than the current model.
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Increase the free default. Two build slots is not enough. Four or five would be a meaningful baseline that serves players across multiple game modes without requiring a purchase on day one.
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Respond to the community publicly. ArenaNet developers reading forum feedback and engaging directly — the way the team did during some of the better WvW discussions in 2017 — would go a long way toward signaling that this isn’t a “ship it and forget it” monetization model.
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Keep the ArcDPS relationship positive. ArcDPS still provides essential raid logging and DPS data that the official game has no equivalent for. The relationship between ArenaNet and the third-party tool community is part of what makes this game’s endgame scene function. Protect it.
Getting the Most Out of Templates Right Now
While we wait for ArenaNet to hopefully iterate on the pricing, here’s how to work within the current system without spending a fortune:
Prioritize your main. Buy the extra slots only on the character you play most. Worry about secondary characters later if pricing improves.
Use Equipment Templates for Legendary gear first. If you have any Legendary weapons or armor, an Equipment Template slot is immediately valuable for that character. The stat-swap utility is real.
ArcDPS still works for everything else. Build template functionality is disabled, but ArcDPS still provides squad DPS logs, personal performance data, and the overlay tools raiders rely on. It’s not gone — just changed. Keep it running.
Export your builds to GW2 Efficiency or Hardstuck for external reference. Third-party build databases haven’t changed. You can still reference and share builds without relying on in-game slots.
Who Should Pay Attention
Raiders and fractal mains: You’ll feel the ArcDPS template loss most. The server-side benefit is real, but the price to reach equivalent slot count is steep. Budget your gems deliberately and prioritize your raid character first.
Legendary gear owners: Buy at least one Equipment Template slot on your character with the most Legendary pieces. It immediately unlocks value you weren’t getting before.
Casual players with one or two characters: The free slots might actually be fine for you. If you play one build in open world and occasionally swap for something specific, two free slots is a workable baseline.
Players with large character rosters: The per-character pricing model is going to hit you hardest. We’d recommend waiting to see if ArenaNet adjusts the model before investing heavily.
What to Watch For
- Official ArenaNet response to community feedback — the forums and Reddit have been vocal. Whether the team responds and what they say will tell us a lot about how much of this is adjustable.
- Gem pricing changes — slot prices could change in either direction. Track the gem store update notes.
- ArcDPS development updates — deltaconnected has been clear about their plan. But the development landscape for third-party GW2 tools is worth watching as ArenaNet’s stance on them continues to evolve.
- Long-term player behavior — do players buy into the template system or avoid it? Revenue data will shape ArenaNet’s next move here more than forum posts will.
The right feature with the wrong pricing model is still a step forward — just not as far forward as it should have been. ArenaNet built something worth having. Now they need to price it like they want people to have it.
We’ll keep covering this as it develops.
Tags: Build Templates, Equipment Templates, ArcDPS, Gem Store, Monetization, Quality of Life, Opinion