Free Runes / Insignias for Heroes in PvE

As much as I love the Hard mode update, I am really not that thrilled over the loss of solo farming. I realize that money is not that important and you can beat the game only using collector's stuff and henchmen. However, there are a few of us who like to maximize efficiency and using heroes usually is much more effective than joining a pick-up group (of course Guild groups are even better). I like making sure that all my heroes have up-to-date equipment be much more efficient than the average player. Sadly, due to rune costs and the decrease in the drop rate, I feel as though I will not finish my goal in a reasonable time frame (6/10 characters complete).

This is my proposal. Allow heroes to equip Runes and Insignias in a manner similar to how PvP characters would make armor. Of course to prevent any exploits and flooding the market, Hero armor would then be unable to be salvaged, just like PvP armor. A way of doing this could be just having the PvP Equipment button only in the Hero inventories and having the weapon tabs grayed out and unable to be used.

I believe that these will be the repercussions if this were to be implemented.

Good Things (IMO)
1. Rune trader prices will go down (with the exception of Superior Vigor of course) due to players not having to buy runes for their heroes (especially Superior Fire Magic and Superior Death Magic). Therefore newer players will be able to play with greater efficiency since they have to grind less for their equipment.
2. Heroes will be able to switch roles every time you outpost since you can modify their entire skill set as well as item set making them more versatile.
3. The money that you save can be spent on further improving your own character or helping others.
4. Somewhat encourage people to do more PvP so that way they can unlock better Runes and Insignias via Balthazar Faction for their heroes if they are not doing it for their PCs anyways. Better to grind once than grind 15 times for each character you make.

Bad Things
1. A mass outcry of people who spent money on heroes to find out that they wasted their money (I spent over 200k just on runes just so you know).
2. Supposedly will encourage a more single-player mindset. Due to heroes being more efficient and easier to command, by making their armor equal or better than a normal player may cause people to want to play solo more.

For the final word, technically this could be a justification to why heroes take their portion of the drops when things die XD.

Note: I meant for unlocked Runes and Insignias. If your heroes immediately had access to everything, that would somewhat be unfair to all the people who spent their time unlocking things in PvP. I thinking just like how your heroes have access to all the skills you have unlocked on your account whether it be PvE or PvP. Also I do use collectors items. Most of my equipment is just upgraded collectors stuff.

/signed

Also, it would be nice if heroes would be account wide so you don't have to equip and level them with every character.

Everything perfect, but I highly doubt that people in A.net are so intelligent to understand that this has to be done.

And in my opinion, they aim at discouraging players to use heroes, since 8 real players PUGing for a mission means 1 instance on their server, whereas 8 players each using a full hero/hench team for the same mission means 8 instances.

The amount of money they lose by having multiple instances (very small, since most of the instance work is done client-side, hence why explorable areas don't lag like towns during big events) is a helluva lot less than they amount of money they lose by annoying people into not buying GW2.

yea the instance idea doesnt work cause 1 man intences actually take 1/8 the server space *who would have thoguht* cause you only send info to comp not to and comp and all other players comps..... yea.... but yes i do /sign this cause i do have tons of green weps for my heros but runes are much more transitionary then weps so yea

The farm nerf was uncalled for and merely hurts the honest players trying to make ends meet. Equipping heroes for 9 characters is a pain and should not be necessarily, especially now that making money takes 8x as long. Prior to this nerf, I was opposed to the idea of free hero items, but since ANET clearly wishes everyone to remain poor:

/signed

Although I payed for large part of the runes on my heroes, and farmed some weapons I still am in favor of your proposal. It would allow much greater flexibility. Armor sets would be a good alternative too, so a menu allows to select u a proper rune that u attached to the armor pieces (multiple runes attach, of which the selected one is functional likewise for weapons)

Just give a warning that the change is comming, so that people can sell off the runes/insignias beforehand to get their investment back.
Hasn't that happened already ?

Though I'd like to apply this to the heroes weapons as well.

/signed, but limit the options to the accounts PvP unlocks

I would agree with having to buy their modifiers only once.
I would agree with being able to create tuff for them in PvP that can't be usend in PvE.

But not with this. It's PvE, afterall. One hing is to have unfari markets and too high prices.
Other thing is not to use gold at all.
I'll go for balance instead.

The problem with them giving a warning is that everybody will do that, and then prices at the trader will crash down as everybody is selling.

Maybe......

Once a hero hits lvl 20, they get Max level armor for free right?

I think they should be allowed to get a full set of insignia and runes for free. It can be salvaged but it will be labeled as a Hero Rune or a Hero Insignia and applicable only to other heros.

Only if

A: You have unlocked it already.
B: You have already bought the rune or insignia once.

Only then, would you be able to get said rune or insignia for free for a hero, regardless of their level.

If these requirements are met, then I would /sign.

I'd say that giving free runes to heroes in pve would be almost same to giving all players free runes because after all you have heroes in pvp too and they get free runes there. And does the runes really matter so much on heroes? I have given only 1 rune for my heroes and i have owned nightfall for 4 months and it really hasn't mattered.

I have nine characters and all the heroes are fully runed and have insignias. I would love to have had this for my heroes from the start.

Do you know that you can tell your heroes to go agro, protect and avoid combat?

/signed

To MithranArkanere: You need to get some sleep your spelling has gone to pot.

/signed

It would be great for heros to be able to use any of the runes which you have unlocked, nice idea

/signed

Paying 10k for a single Bloodstained Insignia is bad enough if you have a Necro character you want to play as a MM (incidentally, most people don't have to as they just pay 1.5k for inherent Bloodstained in another campaign), but multiply that by one Olias each for ten characters (one of each class). Suddenly you have 100k just to get a basic armor bonus on your heros.

/Signed.
Dont care about farmers, they can rot.I want free stuff for my heros as they take loot anyway.Not just runes but weapons too.

amen to that

/signed

/signed

Even though I don't support your obsessiveness towards that sort of perfection (the 6/10 thing, come on), this is a good idea.

Also, with 5k you can get your Hero in beautiful shape (collector items, minor runes, minor vigor, vitae/attunement), considering that's what the current GW pop are doing, free runes will not be very much an issue preventing players to team up with others.

/signed

as said by others, only if you have unlocked. Weapons being made for heros only like PvP would be great too.

~the rat~

Though it would be nice, I doubt A.Net is going to let us have free runes and insignias for our heroes.

But what they could do is let the owner of the heroes get an increased portion of the weapon and item drops in pve missions and explorable areas.

Right now, if I go out with three heroes, I only get 25% of the drops. While this is fine for the gold (heroes have to get "paid" too), I am the one who has to equip them with their weapons, runes, and insignias, but currently, I have to do this out of my own drops.

So maybe A.Net could buff the drop rate for players who take heroes with them. Maybe the following calculation would work:

For each hero controlled by a player, that player's weapon/item drop percentage increases by (40/# of players in group).

So, if I go out by myself with three heroes, I will receive 55% of the drops instead of the current 25%. (25% + 10% +10% +10%). But if I go out with a group of 8, in which three are my heroes, I will receive 27.5% of the drops (12.5% + 5% +5% +5%). This is no way cheats the other players who do not have heroes, for they still get their normal 12.5%. It rewards those who have heroes, without penalizing those who do not, so that those of us with heroes can adequately equip our heroes with their desperately needed weapons, runes, and insignias.