Typical. Asked about this a few days ago. None expected, so burned loads of silver reruning chsmps. 

Surprise free removal isn't a very player friendly tactic. 

more or less ... there's always the 50% off gear removal that happens once every blue moon and not this new one that would probably be the same but they made it 100% ...

something to know for the future , % off gear removal does happen , dont regear everyone when its not up unless its a must ... im nearing 9 months in and ive seen 6 of them (that i noticed and used , might've missed some)

Just for reference , not to bash or anything ! 

Been here longer, and can not remember a 100% free removal campaign before now.

And for those with bad build champs (myself for once), this is a fantastic moment to make those changes, without having to pay shit lot of coins to do so (they are very usefull elsewere imo)

Can't recall a completely 100% off event either. There was an extended period one around Hydra last year, 50% off for what I want to say was a few weeks. 

Never said there was one ... but the 50% off is a common event that happens here and there ... only thing i said is this time its 100% instead of 50 0.o

Free gear removal is a great gift.  Plus 2x on shards.  It will be a fun weekend.  

Plarium, very well done.  

Thank you.  

Yee, I know mate. was just agreeing with the lad above :)

I'm excited. Going to redo a few Hydra teams, regear some nukers, speed up FW farming...

Of course last weekend I finished getting gear onto my Brutal Hydra team, getting some new Tag gearing set up 😂

Just want to say a big thank you to Plarium for this weekend. This is the most fun I have had playing raid, swapping gear around and making builds and not worrying about any mistakes costing me millions of silver. 

This is so much fun ! thank you :)

After using lots of energy to get good equipment and tons of silver to upgrade the gear and hoping for some good substat to be hit, I seriously think that there should be no costs in switching gear...

Not a fan of this for any level of competitive arena, at all. I do not want to have to defend against players with better ascended gear - in a heavy Stone Skin meta no less - with no downside to swapping gear around. I could get down with weekday events, but Sunday/Monday is not the best place for it. 

If it the best ascended gear, wouldn't it be on the champs of the players you are facing in arena nevertheless? 

If you face the opponent in the arena...will his champs not be wearing the best gear possible? So it would make exactly zero difference for you, if the opponent swaps around gear, as in the same fight, he will not have the same gear on two different champions in the same fight as this best gear is only present once in a fight.

When I suddenly have the unique ability to strip all of the gear off of my champs and regear them for free,  does the thinking about sets vs stats change,  at all?

As I grind dragon,  fire knight etc and I get good pieces,  I fit them individually into champs who need their stats upgrade.  (Stats over sets) But technically at any given time,  I have what would be considered a top tier frost set, or frenzy,  or pick whichever set you want,  but normally those pieces are spread out on 4 different champs. 

So with this unique weekend,  should I be thinking of sets,  suddenly? 

In theory this sounds correct, in function not so much. The issue is two fold:

1) The defender has none of the advantage, no way to make adjustments based on the attacker

2) The amount of champions someone has geared out as the attacker goes far past their best 4 or 12, depending on Classic/Tag. Furthermore we're often going to have specific answers to problems depending on what we're facing. I think right now for Tag I have...about 17-18 champions geared out. I could go further than that, too. I'm sure there are players with more than that, too. This is just looking at Arena champions, too. We could definitely pull gear elsewhere.

On top of that: with this being such a set driven - largely due to Stone Skin - the defender would be in an even worse position.

So yeah, there are consequences.

This is...a rather broad question to answer. A lot of it will come down to if you're giving up stats, why are you doing it and where? A lot will also depend on where you're at in the game, what kind of content you're trying to progress in and what your gearing looks like, what kind of stat thresholds you can hit.

The earlier you are, the less it will make sense in PvE outside of Regen/Immortal in revivers (later on solo dungeon and FW champs too), Savage/Cruel/Lethal on some dungeon DPS and lifesteal for your campaign farmer. That's just off the top of my head. 

My guess is you're still gonna be focusing on stats but you can always make a thread and we can see where you're at. :)

Here are some tips for some of you:

1- Go through your vault champions, especially the noob ones that were wearing crap noob gear (remember those "equip attack champion with 3 attack sets" quests?) Maybe you got some silver sitting in your vault this way. Remove and sell them all

2- If you are struggling to complete certain levels of Faction Wars, this is a great time to "cheat" them :P. Find the 5 best sets you got, equip those on your team, you might complete the harder levels no problem (I did this to finish Knights Rev with a level 40 Bergoth, so its possible). The best sets to switch around are probably regeneration, shield and stun sets. Since you may not have 14 great sets of each to have one for each facrion. take your best and swap them around.

3- Along the same lines, if you ever took a pause from the game, you might still have an "open all faction crypts" recall boost. Might be a good time to use it, and repeat process #2 accross all the factions that would otherwise be closed to you during the regear period. You will inch ever closer to Lydia, not a bad thing if you are pushing to get her before the Sylvan Crypt opens.

4- to do tests, to make it easy for you to remember your builds, take off all the gear you have on that champ and slot them on a dupe or whatever champ you never use. Then test out new gear. In case you want to switch back to previous setup, you'll easily find all the pieces on one champion instead of going through all your inventory.

and 5- Most importantly, have fun with all of this!

#2 above is a rly good advice !! 

Im using this event to regear everysingle one because i know more about this then at the time i geared them and probably have gotten way better pieces since then !

Edit: This almost feels like this should be a monthly thing ... feels so good to regear knowing i still got time to correct any mistake in gearing ...

1.) Yes, you are correct in this one...but that has always been the mechanics and will not change based on the sets you are wearing. As a defender you have literally no control beyond setting a team with some parameters. Every action and decision after that is made by the attacker. As a defender you cannot control who attacks you when with whom. For the defender, there will be no changes in his set-up because of free equipment swapping.

2.) You have a point for the tailored attack team. If you have a look at the defending team, you can guess its build-up and make adjustments to your attacking team, giving it even more of an advantage. Yep, you are correct in this one....

Regarding point 2....perhaps it is that I do not feel the consequences of it as being that dramatic. From my experience, Classic AND Tag is normally not decided by the defender...it is already decided by the attacker. It is the decision of the attacker to initiate combat...the only choice a defender can make it to build his defensive team as scary as possible to prevent the attack, perhaps try to set a trap with some good equipment.

I normally hover in the upper echolons of Gold 5 in classic, between G1 and G2 in Tag...and I make 99 % of my points from attacking.

So the consequences of the free equipment swap will be more disadvantages on the defending side...you are correct here...but what will be the consequences? 

• there will be more attacks on me and therefor losses. This will not influence my weekly rewards personally, as I get the same ones for ending in Gold 5. I do also not lose medals for getting beat from opponents.
• I could probably attack more opponents, as I can tailor my attacking teams to beat them. This will give me more medals

I agree with you, that this might have consequences for the placement in Plat arena at the start of the week...but I do not really care about that. 

P.S.: I like your sneaky critics on the Stoneskin set..;-)

Happy New Year to you all

Well for me it was/is like this.

Stripped ALL champs of gear, sold ALL lower rarity and stars based, so now i only have from 4* rare and up  (should proberly sell those 4* too btw)

Have startet to gearing up champs with stat based gear  (Sets if possible, but not main concern)

And even with gear not fully upgraded i now produce more damage to Clan Boss and in Arena, than i could before.

So that says something about my former gearing (and issue with removal cost, so i could not rebuild)

I still have a lot of champs to be build, but are looking forward to do so, now i see that it works.

Have in other threats in here had a lot of help from many of you 😀👌

And the internet (Hell Hades, Ash, Yuamilove, Skratch etc etc) and youtube are frequently used .

You and dthorne arguing over the impact on pvp outcomes...lmao. 

Both of you know that is irrelevant as to why this will never be permanent....Anything that reduces the need to grind endlessly for gear AND essentially eliminates the silver constraint has 0% chance of happening. 

Well, tht free gear removal weekend proved invaluable - done a lot of re-gearing, now it's time to clear out my weakest artifacts from those that aren't currently being used. :)