Here comes my fresh suggestion on a very simple, yet cool addition to the item system in GW. The incoming Eye of the North expansion is the ~perfect~ place to add it.
All it's about is having a possible additional mod/property on a weapon/item/armor piece which reads: Indestructible. All it would do is make the item impossible to be destroyed while salvaging a mod/inscription/rune/insignia from it. Now the details:
**for Armors**
This would be an option, offered by an NPC, to turn a piece of your armor Indestructible at a moderate cost (some materials and/or gold). It would of course be repeatable so you can do it to your whole armor set.
It could also be a quest reward.
I hope I don't have to convince anybody how useful it would be. Just think about trying to salvage back a rune from your favorite armor!
And now look at heroes, who already HAVE Indestructible armors!! If you aquired the runes / insignia, you can freely configure your heroes' armor, change that as you wish, and nothing bad will happen.
Now look at PvP characters - free item creation, 100% flexibility.
Want to use a PvE character for PvP? Already got a cool looking expensive armor but to be able to play multiple different builds you need to swap armor pieces (often to cheaper versions, not everyone can afford 4 extra pieces of FoW gloves for example) or buy new runes everytime you switch build.
Armors already can have an extra property of "Imbued", this could be in a similar way - I bet it's just 1 bit of data per item and that there is space for that 1 bit in item data.
** for Weapons / foci / shields **
My vision is having it as a randomly appearing and quite uncommon property found only on Gold (Rare) items.
There could be a possibility of adding this property to your old item at some cost, or as a quest reward, but i'm not a fan of it.
Some people (me included) complain that Gold (rare) items lost the rareness with the introduction of inscription system. Now inscribable items dropping in Nightfall can be modded and made perfect, no matter if gold, purple or even blue as items don't have any variable inherent mods anymore.
Indestructibility could be the thing! Apart from extra functionality it adds coolness to your gold drop.
Indestructibility could be more common on some rare skins, some could even always come with this property. There are lots of ways of how it could be distributed.
BTW: are Tormented items (from DoA) indestructible or just can't be salvaged ? Because they definately should be.
Summary of Props:
+a new layer and meaning of rarity among items
+make the life of PvE characters easier, bringing them closer to what PvP chars or heroes got
+doesn't affect the game balance and doesn't give anybody any real advantage over those that don't have it
+very easy to implement, as simple as adding and defining 1 bit of data per item (assumption)
+got your best armor, your cooelest weapons, and a collection of mods? use them as you wish, with pvp flexibility, you paid for that!
Cons:
-umm none?
