Guild Wars 2

Just bear with me and look at the professions this way…

-Soldiers-
Light: Guardian
Neutral: Warrior
Dark: n/a

-Adventurers-
Light: Ranger
Neutral: Engineer
Dark: Thief

-Scholars-
Light: Elementalist
Neutral: Mesmer
Dark: Necromancer

Following this train of thought, I kinda have an idea as how the third soldier profession should look like.

Consider the pious nature of Guardians, what with their holy fire and smiting and blah blah blah. On the flip side of the coin, there’s the darker nature of religion: cults, rituals, etc. So we got a dark knight thing going on.

Going off topic, did you know elementalists are the only profession to have no unique weapon? (going by archetype)

-Soldier-
Guardian: Staff, scepter, focus, torch
Warrior: Longbow, rifle, axes, offhand sword, warhorn

-Adventurer-
Ranger: GS, longbow, axes, warhorn, torch
Engineer: Rifle, shield, FLAMETHROWER
Thief: mainhand dagger

-Scholar-
Necromancer: Axe, warhorn
Mesmer: GS, pistol, scepter, sword, torch
Elementalist: n/a

Weapons scholars don’t have are; maces, hammers, longbows, shortbows, rifles, and shields. Conjures don’t count and you know it.

Okay, that’s pretty much it. Thanks for skimming to the end.

I like your breakdown of the soldier, scholar, and adventurer professions. You bring up a good point about the lack of a third soldier profession, perhaps some sort of dark knight or mercenary as a counter balance.

However, I’m not sure what you’re getting at about “unique” weapons and elementalists. Furthermore, if you count the Engineer flamethrower and elixir gun, you have to count conjured weapons, since they all come from utility skills.

Back to the initial part of your post, though. What sort of “dark” soldier do you envision? I admit, this one is a little tougher to imagine for GW2 in a way that fits with the overall theme of the game. WoW did a pretty good job with Deathknights as a kind of dark paladin, once they got the balance issues worked out. I don’t think this is a solution that Anet can take for GW2, however, since the undead are all minions of the dragons.

Could someone more familiar with GW1 list off some professions that could be adapted for this role? The only thing that comes to mind is Dervishes, but I don’t think they wore heavy armor and I believe they were holy warriors, much like Guardians.

INTRODUCING: THE DRAGOON

LORE: Following the defeat of Zaightan, warriors have risen up to master the magical energies left in the wake of his body’s destruction.
Formed from soldiers who failed their Guardian training, the Dragoon’s unorthodox methods and strong emotions is what gives them the focus needed to master the overwhelming power of Dragon energy.

ETHIC: Chaotic Evil. Dragoon’s strong emotions are the only thing keeping their bodies from exploding with Dragon magic.

GAMEPLAY: The Dragoon uses the energy of Dragon magic to corrupt their opponents. They place debuffs on their opponents while simultaneously buffing themselves. They can remove these buffs in a powerful explosion to buff their allies, buff themselves, or unleash a devastating attack. The only thing holding this power in check the Dragoon himself.

WEAPONS: Dragoons are not as skilled as Warriors or Guardians. Their main strength is their ability to focus on their most powerful emotion in order to suppress the Dragon corruption within them. To compensate for their lack of skill Dragoons wear heavy armor and wield slow, lethal weapons.
MAIN HAND:
-Axe.
-Mace.
-Pistol.

OFF-HAND
-Axe.
-Sword.
-Focus.
-Warhorn

TWO-HAND
-Longbow.
-Staff.

Here a couple name brainstorm ideas and another inspirational image:
-Barbarian
-Blackguard
-Demon Knight
-Dragoon
-Ravager
-Ritualist
-Vampyre

Here is my last inspirational image! Look familiar? It was the first response when I searched “Death Knight” in Google.

I really want a soldier that uses archaic magics borrowed from the (now-)fallen races that defeated the dragons. A destructive arcane avenger pulled from the game’s lore, instead of shoehorning something new in.

The reason why I don’t consider conjures at all is because to me, they’re just additional skills. Heck, it’s almost as if they started designing the full skillset for those weapons but gave up after five skills.

Engineers, however, are all about kits. It’s their main feature, the reason why they also don’t have weapon swap.

Another argument is that elementalists are designed around attunement swapping. Having conjures only negates that, instead of enhancing it.

I did think of mercenaries, it’s a good fit. But I was mostly thinking of what a dark soldier does, like conditions and maybe a class mechanic built around having a “enhanced” set of skills that uses blood (your own health) as a resource.

ex. Equip two swords and above the skills (like toolbelt) are enhanced skills that do additional effects or completely different things altogether. The lower your health is, the stronger your “dark spells” do.

This means losing weapon swap, I guess, for the sake of balance.

I say this Game needs as 3rd Soldier Lancers, a Profession that can be used to add to it as Sub Class Dragoons, Partizans and Templars.

Its the only kind of Soldier Type that is missing, the more defensive type of soldier, who fights with mid range weapons, like Halberds/Glaives/Pikes so in brief, with polearm weapons in heavy armors.

Lancers would be imo the only real original addition to this game. With all the other lame crap like Death Knights, Barbarians, Demon Knights, Shadow Knights, Reavers and so on, would we copy only WoW and all the other 0815 stupid WoW Clones with..

GW2 needs to stay as uniue as possible and that they can do imo only with Lancers, because the only MMORPGs I know, that also have Lancers if I remember right, are the 2 FF MMORPGS 11 & 14 and I believe Tera or Rift were the last ones.
Other then those games, no other game is to be known that has a playable clas with polearm weapon gameplay as their main mechanic to perform some class specific moves, like the from FF known and much liked Jump Attacks that would be awesome here, if finally at least one class in GW2 would really make use out of the Z-Axis to perform real high Jumps as a form of medium ranged teleportation attacks

I made for that extra a long time ago self a suggestion, where my thoughts were more about having Dragoons as a complete seperate own Class, instead of them being a Sub Class for a Main Profession.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/The-Dragoon/first#post1350545

I’d also really love to see a class, that has as its own class specific mechanic Mounted Combat, because thats what basically “Knights” do, they ride on something, because Knight is just a changed form of the word “rider” and its exactly that kind of gamepolay, where polearm weapons like Lances make sense.

PS: and what you posted there Finnway, is no Dragoon
You posted basically a Warrior/Guardian Mix with a Picture of a Dark Knight ..

Here, this is a Dragoon:

http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-19/ff14-elezen-dragoon.html
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs38/f/2008/362/2/8/Dragon_Knight_by_porco2.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c117/Kur0i/Dragon_Knight_by_pamansazz.jpg
http://mayshing.com/Gallery/2M-DragonKnight-s.jpg
http://www.mrwallpaper.com/wallpapers/Dragon-Rider.jpg

PPS: looking through the wikis, it was Tera, not Rift, they have Lancers

Actually, THIS is a Dragoon:

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/1/14440/1307127-french_dragoon_l.jpg

Maybe their main condition damage could be Torment?

lol @ Lucky ..

yeah sure, thats the historical version of it from real life …
But in the fantasy game scene is the term “Dragoon” used and very well known due to the Final Fantasy franchise basically as a shortcut term of “Dragon Knight”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dragoon

But the basic point, that you get from Dragoons is, that they were moving around mounted, so a trustworthy Dragoon Class would need to have a kind of integrated Mount Mode, otherwise you couldn’t call it a Dragoon, regardless if now based on the fantasy term, or the real life based historical term. Both versions are riders and it would be in regard of GW2 definetely a unique gameplay mechanic, that world be similar to the Ranger, but instead of using the pet as some kind of A.I. controled minion basically, you control it by mounting it and change that way your combat skill bar to Mounted Combat Skills in regard of which weapon you have equippped.

Finnway.2183:

Here a couple name brainstorm ideas and another inspirational image:
-Barbarian
-Blackguard
-Demon Knight
-Dragoon
-Ravager
-Ritualist
-Vampyre

Yay, Fire Emblem.

Dragoon’s in real history were :::

• Mounted
• Light Cavalry. They had Training as both Infantry and Cavalry. Dragoon units were able to operate just as effectively with or without a mount
• Their main weapons were firearms, not lances or swords. Infact, the word Dragoon in French, is also Dragon, which was a name they used for a specific type of firearm, Wheellock pistols. Some had the barrel decorated with a dragon’s head. Lances weren’t actually used that often.

Dragoons in (Final) Fantasy Games are :::

• Lance Users.
• Quite fast with high agility.
• A Mix of Light, Medium, and Heavy Armor wearers, with everything inbetween.
• examples include Kain Highwind (FFIV) who wore heavy armor, and used all kinds of melee weapons. There was also Cid Highwind (FFVII)who used spears and some modern explosives with his special attacks. There was also Freya Crescent (FFIX) who, in addition to wearing (some) medium and mostly heavy armor, used Lances, and had very few dragon themed abilities.

There is nothing in video games or history that says they should wear heavy armor, and there is also nothing that says they should be using lances as a weapon of choice. There isn’t even anything that says they have to be mounted, and without a mount, they wouldn’t be any different from the things that Warriors and Engineers can fill now.

And even if you give them a mount as a class mechanic, the main problem with that is, is that if you start making characters able to move faster than they do now, the entire combat system in the game breaks because projectiles and leap attacks wont be fast enough to catch up.

We need a different concept to use for our third soldier profession. I don’t think dragoons would work.

I don’t think anything requiring mounts or a whole new terrestrial weapon set is workable.

As is, spears(which is essentially what a lance is) are only usable in an aquatic setting. Making the shift to using them on land requires adding a whole new set of attack animations to every profession that will be able to use them, and there will be other professions that can use them.

No other profession has a equipable weapon that is unique to that profession only.

No other profession has a mount.

While these seem like cool ideas that would make our hypothetical 3rd soldier class unique, I submit that uniqueness =/= good design.

The problem, as I see it, is twofold.

1. We need a class that is inline with the GW lore and theme. Preferably an existing GW1 idea that is redesigned for GW2, as opposed to a idea from another MMO that is shoehorned into GW2.

2. A class that uses existing mechanics and items wherever possible, so as to minimize the programing, design, and QA time. I know everybody wants something new, unique, and above all, cool for any new classes that are introduced, but Anet has finite resources to throw at something like this. The less they have to redesign the wheel, the better. Don’t forget, they also have to try and balance anything new against existing professions, so as not repeat the mistakes of other MMOs that have introduced new classes.

When WoW introduced DKs, every arena team had to have at least 1. They started off very overpowered and had a number of mechanics that people either couldn’t counter or didn’t know how to counter. It caused an uproar amongst the pvp community and left DKs with a rep as a cheesy flavor of the month class, even after they were balanced against the other classes. I would prefer not to see that happen in GW2.

I don’t know what our hypothetical 3rd soldier profession should be yet, but as soon as I can think of a good idea, I’ll post it.

mmm only thing i still feel would be fun is a shape shifter or a puppet master like in naruto. or a dragon spirit caller ? light armor who just summon avatars but he would be still a puppet master stay alife in second line and control his avatar from the distance, with the ability to merge with his avatar for melee fight

All this talk about dragoons and FF comes to mind? O.o Am I the only one that ever played the epic game, ‘The Legend of Dragoon’? What an amazing game…lol…I’m getting a bit nastalgic.

I wouldn’t want a class taken from FF in guild wars, or else we’re also going to have a medium armor sword/rifle/pistol/greatsword wielding class called emo fighter.

I’d rather have sword/rifle/pistol mounted light infantry.

berserker

lore: long ago, when the dwarfs still lived among the world’s greatest hero’s, there was a group that had a temper beyond that of anger.
they used there rage to charge trough even the mightiest foe, even with barely any armor to protect their fragile bodies they charged as if they were possessed by an unknown force.
after 200 years of world evolution the 4 races managed to learn the same arts as the ancient dwarfs did, they harnessed the power of rage and uncontrolled fury to conquer the mightiest foe’s and dared the most dangerous challenges that makes even the most brave warrior shake in their boots.

reverence picture:
http://maxcdn.thedesigninspiration.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Berserker-l.jpg

http://www.darkestofangels.com/wp-content/uploads/wm-media/darkest-of-angels/gallery/fan-art/yuanqiujian/female-barbarian-by-yuanqiujian.jpg

gameplay focus:
the berserker is focused on heavy armor but has many skills that sacrifices defense/armor for pure damage, this is the ultimate DPS glass cannon.
they are able to support but only trough keeping the enemy busy while the rest recuperates, their true strength comes in battle ground control.
they are the masters of close range control and can attack whole groups with conditions and ground control skills, they are able to change from a defense savant to a raging monster in seconds.

they have the following weapons:

• great sword
• great axe
• sword(both hands)
• dagger(off-hand)
• hammer
• mace (ether hand)

they have the following F key skills which will be available when you have enough adrenaline:

• anger-for X second, increase your damage drastically while lowering your armor rate.(lvl 1)
• hate-for X seconds, your AOE attacks become single target attacks but do 3X more damage.(lvl 4)
• release-shakes off immobilize, cripple and chill.(lvl 8 )

example of skills:

signet of endurance
passive: gain health while you attack
active: fill your adrenaline bar

dwarven stance
for X seconds, you can’t be knocked down/chilled/immobilized/feared/crippled and hate now causes fear 2 meters around you.