Forum:New GW2 info/The Professions

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The Professions
This section covers the profession introduction articles posted on www.guildwars2.com. Other articles posted there are covered in above.

Profession 1: Elementalist
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/elementalist/

Sounds very interesting. I like the idea of Attunements being constant buffs that you can swap on-the-fly. And the revamped Phoenix is quite spiffy. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 03:58, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * They should rename it to Boomerang Bird. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 05:52,  April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * The Ele's always been "my" chosen class, back-line  nuking > everything IMO. The attunement system seems to make the ele  more versatile (but does that mean that we have to trade off 3 of the 10  skills for the attunement spells, not sure. The spells look awesome,  and many seem to focus on not only backline nuker, but backline  controller (Static feild looked like it kept people in position for a  few seconds, allowing the ele to shield themselves from melee inherentl,  water trident looked like it had a knockback) This may well be  important if GW2 is going to be completely solo-friendly. From  what I can gather, then - the new ele is backline nuker/anti fighter much more  than the current ele is. Random Time  06:20, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, is that a female Charr? Random Time  06:21, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed it is, my living-up-to-his-name friend! --Gimmethegepgun 06:38, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, yes, Water Trident gets a knockback, it says so in the design manifesto when describing fire wall+water attune+smack them into fire wall --Gimmethegepgun 06:46, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * yes, we've seen screen shots of her before, look at the charr page on the main siteAkbaroth 07:06, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not particularly happy with the presence of knockback in GW2. You'll notice that in GW1 they were wise enough to never give players a skill or ability to alter an opponent's position. In fact, only very hard and challenging pve areas can forcibly move a player- The Aspect of Scorpions in The Deep, and Mallyx. The fact that they state how important positioning is in the design manifesto and then give players all sorts of options to fuck it up is disappointing. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 07:41, April 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * "Signets provide an ongoing benefit to the Elementalist, but can also be activated for a greater effect." Complete skill function revamp? Also, I'm quite sure you wouldn't need to manually bring the attunements, but it'll probably be a "change attunement" button or something instead of the "switch weapon set" one. Knockback doesn't seem too bad. From the skills article, it seemed like positioning gets a lot more important, so disrupting the enemy positioning could turn into a whole new dimention in the gameplay. Also, first time someone actually DELETED the page while I was typing :S --[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 15:03, April 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oops, sorry. ^^; Blame it on RT for not moving it to the right place to begin with. :P
 * Oh, and I already commented about the attunement-instead-of-weapon-swapping above. If accurate, I like that idea a lot better than having to worry about finding/crafting a perfect weapon set for every different element that you use.
 * I'd think that knockback would actually be necessary if positioning is going to be that important in combat. The people who rely most on said positioning, probably warriors, will likely have access to "stability" skills that prevent knockback (similar to Balanced Stance/etc.).  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 15:33, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ow dam thats cool :P. It looks so dinamic and reall. They sure want it to look like a RPG. It seems so real. Can't wait to see what they did with the Necromancers :D. Maybe they kill Asura and reanimate them and then kill them again! Hooray! -- F1Sig.png  † F1 ©  Talk  16:21, April 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * No F1: You kill Asura, then raise them, and use them to kill others and let others kill the asura again for you. Talk about a laidback profession ^.^ Also, after seeing the water trident movie, I don't think that's knockback. It's just knockdown, but the animation is that they fall backwards. You can see that when they get back up they're still on the same place as where they were before. Too bad :/ --[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 16:59, April 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Slightly clearer explanation from an interview.
 * "In Guild Wars 2 an elementalist can attune to one of the four elements. The attunement they are in combines with their choice of weapon to change the first five skills on their bar. For example an elementalist attuned to fire and wielding a staff will have access to five skills including the Fireball skill. An elementalist attuned to fire and wielding a scepter and focus will have access to a completely different set of five skills including Dragon’s Breath. When that elementalist attunes to water he has five new skills."
 * "Attuning to the different elements will also provide the elementalist with an ongoing passive effect. Fire attunement will damage any foes striking the elementalist. Water will heal nearby allies. Earth will protect the elementalist giving him additional armor. Air attunement will cause bolts of lightning to randomly strike nearby enemies."
 * --Evenfall 17:42, April 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * So based on that, are we correct to believe that if you attuned to water, and equipped that same exact staff, you'd get 5 water skills? That is, the staff is not tied to any one attunement?  I think that's what the quote there is implying, and I hope that's the case.  It's going to suck enough as it is to have to hunt down and carry around a dozen different staves just to get the set of 5 skills you want for one attunement (assuming each staff gives a different set of 5 skills), doing it for four would be obnoxious. 65.207.54.194 17:55, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Weapon-linked skills will be the same for all weapons of the same type. All water-attuned elementalists wielding any staff will have the same set of staff/attunement-linked skills.  All warriors wielding any sword and any shield will have the same set of sword/shield-linked skills.  There are not going to be any ultra-rare weapons that grant super-powerful skills or anything like that.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 18:12, May 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some variation between weapons that give some passive effects, though. Maybe put in some extended information boxes, then you can put in what exactly it does for each profession and attunement or whatever others might end up with, but only show the ones relevant to your current profession unless you extend it --Gimmethegepgun 08:09, May 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * Curious, just started reading up on GW2. I see the Elementalist profession and all I see mentioned is "her". Am I to understand that gender is now going to be fixed instead of chosen?


 * No. There's gameplay footage of male Eles as well (Water Trident video, I think?), but "The Ele", as used in examples and suchlikes, is female. "The Warrior", on the other hand, is always referred to as "he". No idea why, but w/e, it works :P --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  17:14, July 3, 2010 (UTC)

Profession 2: Warrior
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/warrior/

Still gotta read, thought you all might be interested.--El_Nazgir 19:01, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems nice. Eviscerate makes him charge to the target, and that stomp showed us that there is indeed knockback. New stance stuff is cool too.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 19:08, June 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Built in skill chaining may well be good. Perhaps 2 chains can be used at the same time, for some strange build combos. Not sure how I like the tank class dealing long range AOE, but it might work. I don't like playing warrior, or fighter classes in general, they bore me in any game. This may change that, but I'm much more interested in the magic/ long range classes.  Random  Time   19:39, June 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also. The quips. Stop with the quips  Random  Time   19:41, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Whoo, I called it! I knew they'd release warrior second since they'd already been using it for examples in other articles.  Anyway, now that I'm done gloating...
 * Pretty sure there's only 1 chain per weapon set: "Chains effectively give a warrior two extra weapon skills on a weapon set." *Two* extra skills, thus only one chain.  It sounds and looks like they'll function similar to assassin attack chains, where you have to keep hitting the same target to progress through the chain, and it resets if you switch targets.
 * "Hold that pose." I actually lol'ed at that one, but yeah, they're already getting old.  And we have 6 more professions to go.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 20:07, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * The quips were probably just added in the "trailer" thingy and are most likely not ingame... Also, yeah, the chaining is interesting, and also: there will be no more dedicated roles of 1 profession, as has been said a lot now. Yeah, warriors will tank well, but that doesn't prevent them from dealing long range damage.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 20:09, June 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm positive someone from Anet is glancing through our comments once every two days or so, to see what people want. They'll likely add an option to turn the quips on or off. Or they could add voice chat, so we can have our own quips! Interrupt spell -> "Bitch please". Also note that Anet is taking a very different direction with this(No dedicated healer makes that pretty clear), I don't think the warrior is the "tank", I doubt they'll have any profession dedicated to that, and the AI in GW2 will likely cause enemies to go for whoever, whenever, therefore making a tank useless. It's just 8 different professions with 8 different ways of doing stuff.--99.225.28.182 20:45, June 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I totally called it on the warhorn being a profession-specific offhand instead of being a bundle item. Not in this subject, some other one... somewhere.--99.225.28.182 20:48, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not so sure it's War-only, though. Who says my Ele can't hold a warhorn? The skills will probably be less effective, but hey, same as a secondary profession in theory (where in practice secondaries can overshadow primaries (see also: Ele spells)) . --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  20:53, June 9, 2010 (UTC)

This might seem biased since I like to play rangers/casters but... They don't seem that great. Its not like they got some awesome mechanic that can completely change how they are played, like the ele did with attunement switching on the fly. Some neat stuff in there, like the one-slot chains and a very impressive 19 weapon combos but other than that...I'm sure they'll be markedly better than they sounded on the interview because we don't know what they're capable of (not knowing the skills and all) but apart from the longbow/rifle thing they seem like the same thing that they've always been: a tank. Except from the way they've been describing things tanks won't be quite as useful in GW2. I dunno. They sound fun, and I'm not quite sure what I was expecting from warriors in GW2, but as of now they seem pretty meh. Someone please tell me I'm wrong lol. 151.196.189.61 04:24, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * The war got a lot of AoE damage, with the longbow, greatsword and hammer. For the rest, party buff skills (like that banner they mentioned). Seems like they threw the paragon and warrior together, with a brush of AoE in it.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 09:49, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * ~Pure tanks are terrible in GWO as well. The only tanky thing any of my Warriors ever took was their armor, some a shield. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  14:27, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

@151.196, Warriors can also knock people into the air, and impale them while in mid air, according to the GW2 website. @Vipermagi, What I meant by "Profession-specific" was that it was intended for a certain profession(s). Kind of like how the shields in Gw1 are "profession-specific" to Paragons and Warriors. I expect the Warhorn and Torch to be the same. Torch will likely go to a mid-armor professions. One of the "Adventurers". That's just my guess.--99.225.28.182 23:01, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Additional - interview with Eric Flannum about the warrior class at massively.com - clarification, mostly  Random  Time   23:11, June 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * For quips "There are limits put on it to make certain it doesn't happen too often and players always have the option to disable it if they want."


 * For the use of ranged attacks "We want every weapon that a profession can equip to be a valid choice for that profession. That means that if I choose to, I could make a warrior that does nothing but stand back and rain fiery arrows or rifle shot upon my enemies"

- torches are similar  Random  Time   23:15, June 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * For warhorns "A warhorn is simply an offhand weapon so what it does is different in the hands of different professions. Some professions use the horn solely to buff allies while others have found more aggressive uses for it."


 * I can already see groups inviting a warrior because they need some melee for some purpose, and then once it's too late to kick him, the warrior saying that he's a ranged warrior and doesn't have a melee weapon at all. Though I guess that's not really any different from the elementalists and assassins in this game who imagine themselves as pure damage dealers and don't carry any viable PVE gear at all, and die in about three seconds and then blame the healer for not miraculously saving them.  Quizzical 03:01, June 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well your first mistake is PUG'ing in PvE. =P I always had more of a problem with eles telling me how I should play my build, regardless of what profession I was. And Assassins simply refusing to change their 7-attack combo chain that has to use palm strike every other hit. If GW works out how I think it will, we won't have the two problems I mentioned(as much), and there won't be a need for a tank(I'd assume they'd make the AI smart enough to ignore tanks). However, I'm sure we'll have all sorts of new idiots to deal with in GW2.--99.225.28.182 03:45, June 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well your first mistake is PUG'ing in PvE. Not really.  I'd always insist on checking builds and max health, and I'd catch and filter out the people who were going to run something incredibly stupid, or at least make them change it.  I certainly hope that Guild Wars 2 gives us the means to do the same, as we won't be able to rely on heroes to fill in holes.
 * It's not necessarily a need for a tank. Sometimes it can be convenient simply to have a couple of melee characters, in order to make the group's natural spacing something that works better against mob AI.  Regardless, there are always creative ways to be an idiot, so worrying about this particular one is kind of dumb.  It was just my initial thought when I read the post.  Quizzical 06:09, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

Heh. I should really pay more attention to these updates. Regardless, Warrior seems to be interesting. Sounds like they're mixing in a little Ranger, a little Paragon, and a little Assassin to make them less all tank all the time. Entrea   [Talk]  09:11, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

Profession 3: Ranger
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

That's the "core 3" classes done, in my mind (RIP monk - the 4th core class). Anyway, notes: Discuss --  Random  Time   00:13, July 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ranger considered jack-of-all-trades, may be more like the traditional rogue type class.
 * Rangers have 3 pets, normally 1 active at a time (this'll probably mean that you can charm 3, but don't have to give them up when you want to switch).
 * Pet sharks (water only, I guess, which makes sense if you can switch).
 * Traps are similar to GW
 * Spirits seem to do more damage buffs, will go away if a ranger strays too far.
 * Ranger can use ranged weapons, as well as a sword, axe, dagger, torch and warhorn (might be going for a more of an Aragorn Ranger-of-the-north style class?)
 * Pets have up to 20 evolution levels


 * Looks to me like they're trying to sell the beast master with the rangers. Makes sense, since beast masters were possibly one of the least used styles of play in GW (why control one pet when you can animate a whole bunch of minions/spirits?) I like the fact that the pets can get customized skills, and that serpent strike moved looked pretty cool :) Otherwise...the article seemed kind of short compared to the ele and warrior articles. I'm scared because many of the typical GW ranger duties/skills weren't mentioned in the article. If they scrap preparations, I'll be mad. And only one trap/spirit at a time? Or only one "active" at a time? No trap spamming, it looks like? I dunno. As primarily a ranger in GW, this article didn't wow me by any means...it almost looks like beastmasters got a buff and the rest of it was just copy/pasted from GW. I know that seems pessimistic, but still. Ele's can change attunement. Warriors get banners. And Rangers get pseudo-hero pets? Meh. I'm still gonna play as one, though :) I just hope they're better than they look, as laid out by the article. 71.248.38.185 19:04, July 16, 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's one of each trap/spirit at a time. (So you can have trap x and trap y up at the same time, but not 2 of trap x) --  Random Time  19:07, July 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) It's one of each type of trap/spirit. You can have a Spike Trap, a Snare, and a Flame Trap, but you won't be able to echo-spam Dust Trap anymore.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 19:24, July 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * You kinda described my feelings as well. Wasn't as "new" as the Elementalist. The Warrior banners are probably Ward-like; I was more interested in the wider variety of weapons. --Vipermagi 20:10, July 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * When they revealed elementalists, they also revealed a lot of stuff about the skill bar. When they revealed warriors, they also revealed a lot of stuff about traits.  That's what made those class reveals so much more interesting.  Rangers will also have that some skills change when you change your weapon, and that you can build differently using traits.  But those things aren't new information anymore, which is what made this class reveal a lot less exciting.  Quizzical 06:30, July 17, 2010 (UTC)

PC Gamer interviews Eric Flannum about the ranger and reveals a few interesting tidbits.
 * No more "wasting" a skill slot in order to have a pet. You can charm a pet simply by finding one and having an empty pet slot, and you can have any one of your 3 charmed pets with you at all times.
 * The "Hunter's Call" skill (one of the videos) is a warhorn skill, but it's unusual in that other professions that use the warhorn get buff-type skills for it, not attack skills.
 * The ranger's sword combo skill consists of a basic attack, a kickback attack, and a leap attack.
 * Rangers use axes as short-range throwing weapons.

IGN imitates but gets quite a few more tidbits. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 15:34, July 18, 2010 (UTC)
 * Rangers eschew firearms in order to "emphasize their bond with nature."
 * Beyond simply throwing axes, rangers can ricochet them between multiple targets.
 * Like GW1, there will be no ammunition mechanic - infinite arrows/axes/buckshot/whathaveyou for everyone!
 * Alpha Strike, an elite skill, can bring all 3 of your pets out at the same time, depending on environment - i.e. can't bring your shark out in the forest or your bear out underwater... unless you have "the occasional aquatic bear."
 * Evolving your pet through the 20 Evolution Levels will yield a total of 4 ability slots for the pet.
 * Certain other professions will also use pets, but in a much more restricted manner - "Rangers are the only profession with nameable, fully customizable and controllable pets."
 * Both interesting, good finds. The PC gamer article mentioned "level 50" - which means (unfortuatly) it looks like there's going to be a much higher level system in GW2 --  Random Time  15:42, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Serpent Strike; active melee dodging, or just part of a retaliatory melee attack? In Guild Wars 1, if a melee attack is initiated, no matter how far you run, they get their normal hit check. No 100% miss because the target happened to take two steps to the left. The Serpent Strike video seems to show active dodging, however, by using the "teleport in their back" mechanism on Serpent Strike to avoid their melee attacks. The ability to actively/manually dodge melee would make hitting moving targets pretty hard with slower weapons/attacks.

In GW1, Ranged attacks had the range advantage (duh), but ranged attacks can also be dodged by sidestepping. That's where melee characters had an advantage. Taking that advantage away from melee attacks would shift the balance towards ranged, since their drawback is mutual, yet ranged attacks still have their range advantage. Of course, in the current state of GW1, melee has a big damage advantage, but that's because ranged attacks are harder to buff up (no SoH for one), and they're rather slow. They could fix this in other ways than by screwing melee, since they're making an entirely new game anyways. Fun fact: In Diablo II, ranged attacks are strictly superior. Lightning Fury, Bone Spear, Corpse Explosion, Frozen Orb, Meteor, Blessed Hammer... --Vipermagi 10:29, August 5, 2010 (UTC)

So, if I understand, and see by the videos, they will exactly use the same skills and all from the 1 gw but just a bit different (More tactically)? Well, I can live with that. But I'm pretty sire the builds from 1st gw won't work anymore in gw2, or at least not at maximum effort. --  Jorre 22225  11:32, August 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it's not all the same skills. Some of the names are being carried over, and the GW2 version may share some similar effects with the GW1 version, but they won't be exactly the same.  Just look at the Barrage video - in GW1, it's a multi-target attack; in GW2, it's more of an AoE effect.  The mechanics of the skill bar itself (having some skills determined by weapon and a dedicated healing slot) will make it impossible to port any builds from GW1.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 13:45, August 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * A ok, I'm glad with that also... The barrage looks awsome, but the enemies seem really to be able to handle as 1 person. I didn't find it anywere, but is it still with outposts nd your own map of explorable areas or will it be like runscape and kalonline, 1 world for everyone? The environment seems cool now btw, no more dust etc... except maybe in the charr territory. I can't wait to install it on my new computer (Latest graphics card from ATI (ATI Radeon HD 5870, Proccessor I7 Quad Core, Superb sound card, and many more :P and enough space to install it 1000 times even if it can only once, except if and I expect, expansions will go out later). --  Jorre 22225  15:43, August 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * You couldn't find anything about that? o_O It's only the most important change they're making - most of GW2 will be a persistent world.  They'll still use instancing for specific events along your personal storyline and for dungeons, but that's it.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 16:00, August 5, 2010 (UTC)

Profession 4: Necromancer
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/necromancer/

Wells sound similar to those of Guild Wars, except created at the player's location rather than exploiting a corpse. It doesn't mention exploiting corpses, so that mechanic likely doesn't carry over. The description of marks makes them sound like wells that you can place somewhere else.

Minions sound very different, though. It says that you can use a skill to make a minion, and then that skill is replaced by something that kills the minion but provides some other benefit. I hope that means no more necromancers running around with 10 minions.

Fear sounds like the mechanic of the same name that exists in a number of other games. It's meant as crowd control, but obnoxious when someone uses it on you. As Blizzard noted when toning down crowd control for PvP in WoW, players don't think it's fun to lose control of their character.

Death shroud sounds weird. I'd probably have to try it in order to have a meaningful opinion on it. Quizzical 21:02, August 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * If Fear is anything like it was in NWN, it'll be an annoyance. However, I like the fact that necro is going more towards control. We'll see with the minion changes. --  Random Time  11:39, August 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * In the Gamescom Q&A with Izzy, he mentioned that they would be balancing skills separately for structured PvP, with an option to also balance them separately in WvW. If enough PvP players complained, they'd probably revamp the Fear mechanic into something different for PvP.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 12:30, August 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Izzy has said on twitter that the current Fear durations are 2-5s PvE and max 2secs for PvP. Just thought I could note. [[Image:EM Signature.jpg]] ***EAGLEMUT***   T  A  L K 16:29, August 27, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's just about enough time for a good spike. It's not only about duration anyhow, but about uptime and ease of application. Backbreaker is a super strong lockout, but it's a slow melee attack (hammers just aren't fast) that is blockable, can miss due to Blind/RH/etc., can be interrupted, and requires Adrenaline. It's not that easy to sling around, unlike casting a PDrain. And how about chaining with multiple casters? So yeah, questions. --Vipermagi 16:48, August 27, 2010 (UTC)

Profession 5: Guardian
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/01/21/big-10-of-2011/3/ http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/

The official GW2 page won't be live until Thursday, but the name of the profession got leaked in PC Gamers "Big 10 of 2011" feature last Friday. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 16:39, 23 January 2011 (UTC)