Guild Wars 2

Now, I know that we are not likely to get full-blown secondary professions like they existed in GW1, and I’m totally okay with that.

HOWEVER! It would be nice if there was a way to hybridize your toon to add a greater diversity to builds by minorly supplementing your profession’s abilities with something thematically unique from a different profession.

What if, at a certain arbitrary level, a quest line were to open up that allowed you to train in a second profession. Whichever profession was chosen would grant each of the following upon completion:

1 set of weapon skills
1 set of skills
1 line of traits

So, after completing the quest, you would acquire a new weapon set from your chosen profession, a new set of utility skills from your chosen profession, and a new traitline from your chosen profession. These would not be chosen from the profession’s skill list, rather each profession would have a few new skills created that acted only as that profession’s “hybrid” skills and weren’t usable by that profession, only when that profession is chosen as secondary.

So, for instance, an Elementalist might grant a set of 4 utility skills called “Arcana”, which would include a diverse set of magical tricks. It might grant the the elementalist staff as a weapon set, which unlike the actual Elementalist would have a spell for each element (the 5th one could be something spirit or inclusive themed). It could grant a trait-line called “Elemental Training”, which would do things to provide additional magey stuff. The only thing is I’m not sure what stats it would boost.

I just think it would be cool to be able to hybridize your main profession in this way to open up a lot more customization within each profession without directly adding power or too much flexibility for what would seem like a relatively small amount of work.

Alternatively, if it’s much easier to pull off, I’d be okay with just getting the utility skills and not necessarily needing to get traits or new weapon skills.

Honestly , it may look easy to add. But it is not.

Reason Anet took this out is because it would be hell to balance. may seem easy to you but make the math. each class is 8 new combos , that means a total of 64 combos Anet will have to balance. (im not even adding the new skill count which would make the number sky rocket)

While i understand this could be nice , it would give a LOT of work to Anet , which at the game launch left this out just because of this.

Was really bummed when I noticed you couldn’t have a secondary, But Nox is correct. Too many other issues they’re focused on anyway.

yeah as a Nox said, way too much work to add at this point in time, that said the suggestion itself is a pretty good start at least, if there ever were to be a secondary profession.

You guys must not have read very thoroughly. Dabbling in a second profession would not mean gaining access to all their skills, or even a subset of their skills that you would cherry pick from. It would give you access to a very specific and very limited set of unique skills that are themed around that profession, and the those skills would be the same regardless of what your main profession was.

In other words, it would only be 8 new sets of skills, for 32-40 new utility skills (and 40 new weapon skills if they did that part too). Those skills would be generic enough to be appropriate for all classes (though they would have a unique ‘type’), and they could even treat them like the racials and make them a bit weak if they wanted. It’s more for flavor. It really wouldn’t need to be that difficult to do or balance.

I think it’s a fantastic idea.

I think, like the others, it would be difficult to implement and a lot of work, but that’s not really our concern. It’s a great idea, would be a huge amount of fun and add a lot to the game.
If a dev wants to pop in and say “No way, no how, too much work” that’s fine but I wouldn’t argue their case for them.

Anastasia.8697:

I think it’s a fantastic idea.

I think, like the others, it would be difficult to implement and a lot of work, but that’s not really our concern. It’s a great idea, would be a huge amount of fun and add a lot to the game.
If a dev wants to pop in and say “No way, no how, too much work” that’s fine but I wouldn’t argue their case for them.

Thanks. The thing is I don’t think it necessarily needs to be lot of work, and it would give quite a bang. They could just draw up 4-8 new skills for each profession that would be that profession’s hybrid skills. Instead of using those skills themselves, they would be the skills that are granted to other professions when chosen.

4-8 new skills for each profession is roughly about as much as making a whole new professions (+/- a bit) so yeah it about as much work(maybe even a bit more) as making a whole new profession, which yes is a LOT of work

While i think that this may be a good idea diversity-wise, i have to agree with the others; that it would be too much, at least currently, for ANet to take on.

Math-wise, thats 7 new combinations per profession, so that’s 56 different combinations to be considered. 5 new weapons skills for each combination (unless all weapon skills will be the same reguardless of primary, & i don’t think that would be a good idea, but that’s just my opinion) & thats 280 new skills not including utilities, which’ll either be 224 for 4 new utility skills, or another 280 for 5 (if adding a new heal skill). & then, if there are to be trait lines, that’s 8 new lines they would have to come up with, adding 2 new stats to each and at least 3 minor & 3 major trait skills to each line as well (24 minors, 24 majors). & then if they follow the option of 12 different trait skills for each major, that’s 96 new major trait skills.

Don’t know about you, but i reckon that’s a lot to take on, especially with the time it takes to currently fix bugs & balance skills now.

Personally, i’m happy at the moment with the mix of weapon skills & utility skills currently available (although some do suck!).

It’s a great idea as it would fix my problem with being indecisive. My mesmer lacks some spells that elementalists get. My ranger could do with some thiefy utility skills. Perhaps if there was a second profession available to me, I would have been able to settle with a character as opposed to switching around always :(

But like many people have said here – it’s too much work to balance, implement, etc. Only two people are even doing the balance & bug fix thing it seems, so there’s that as well.

I could see “specializations”. That give a profession another healing skill, 4 more utility skills and another elite, plus access to one or two new sets of weapon skills.
For example, thief:
- Assassin: Focus on shadow steps and melee. Gets offhand swords (2+3 skills) and underwater dual swords (this would make many largos thief -> assassins).
- Spy: Focus on stealth and deception. Gets rifle, used as a sniping weapon of sorts and underwater dagger (uses one slot, but gives 5 skills).
- Kleptomaniac: Focus on stealing. This adds no weapon sets, but the elite skill behaves like a mix of stealing skills and engineer toolkits: ‘steal’ an enemy weapon, disabling them for 3-4 seconds, and for 30 seconds they can use the elite skill like a kit skill that gives them the weapon skills the target had. After the 30 seconds, it recharges for 240 seconds. Underwater the kit would give the target’s current underwater weapon at the time they where mugged, the weapon they would have if they entered water at that moment.

This way you can add separate things to a profession to expand playstyles, without adding too many things to it as you have to choose the set you want.

But not picking things from other professions.
Letting one profession get things from another means that you may have to balance skills considering it’ll affect both professions, which is way harder to balance. Picking and choosing is also harder to balance. But small packets of extras per profession are way easier to balance as there’s less skill interactions to check.

My God you people utterly fail at reading comprehension.

The skills would be fairly generic, they would be the same regardless of your primary profession, and they would only be used by people who had that profession as secondary, not by the primary profession itself. We really aren’t talking rocket science here, and really isn’t as much work as you are all acting like it is, especially not if they only do it with utility skills. In that case, it would be less work than designing a single new profession, while adding a lot of interesting stuff to the game.

Mithran, your idea is absolutely no different than mine mechanically, it’s just that the ‘specializations’ would thematically represent other professions.

Heh you should understand that , when the majority of the people fail to understand what someone said , usually is not their fault , since it is on the person explaining the obligation to get the message passed.

Either way , your idea still will be major on skill balance , like i said before , you just lack the vision to see it. Even more if we cant change this second set later on.

First , your idea goes against what Anet said about best matches , by that i mean , a player should not feel the need of picking a race/class combo. But now it goes to class1/class2 combo. Because unless Anet nerf it like they did to racials , best matches will appear.

Now you gonna say , Anet can balance so they dont? No Anet cant do it easily. Just like Anet could not balance racials so it could not happen. Know why?

Cause racials are static , just like your idea of each class2 will be. Therefore (lets say they add 8 skill weapons+uti and some stats) , some of the 8 skills + stats will make more dif to one class than the other. And that will drive player to pick said combo like guard/necro or ele/war (just adding some that would make some sense depending on the stats/skill added)

So do you now see? What you think would not cause a major unbalance would actually do it. Because , if Anet wants to make sure class1/class2 does not happen , they gonna have to invent entire new ways to balance this game.