Guild Wars 2

Hi Guild Wars 2 staff! I would like to throw you a suggestion that feels like it’ll knock your guys socks out of the ballpark!

Lets get talking about it, then! I was sitting here on Guild Wars 2, talking to a friend in Skype, while playing, and wondering to myself, “I wonder if the team had any ideas about readding the dual-profession mechanic into Guild Wars 2?” Now, it got me to thinking about the whole idea about dual-professions. And I really ran with this idea; not too far, but far enough so that it feels like an expansive step from what was introduced in the original Guild Wars.

Without further comments, then, I’ll shoot this idea right at you guys!

My idea centers around the thought of professions being.. merged, rather than what was introduced in the original GW. What I mean by this, is that, take for instance, the Warrior and Elementalist professions; the Warrior centers around high powered melee attacks using Greatswords, swords, and otherwise; whereas the Elementalist relies on the four Elements to conjure up mighty weapons, protect themselves and allies, or to dish our monstrous bursts of flame, earth, and what-have-you — Now take these two relatively different classes and merge them together! This creates an Elemental based Warrior that (and this is where I’ll leave it up to your own imagination to do some work) uses the Elements and brute force to overcome obstacles. To clarify what I mean by this, I mean taking the Warrior’s ability “Charge” and merging it with an Elementalist ability — Such as “Cleansing Wave” — this creates an ability we’ll call “Restorative Burst”, where the character lunges forward healing allies and chilling foes in their path and in a, lets say, 600 radius of the target.

That, essentially, is the profession merging idea. This would be a new addition to the gaming community (I believe), and would further expand the character to make it much more deadly (and interesting!). Included in this, I would say that I thought there could be a new set of traits, and skills that are similar to the skill-merge that further progress the character like what we have now.

By now, I’m sure you’re wondering, “How would this idea make any sense in our expansive, and immersive game and community?” Well, I have an answer for you! The character (depending on base-profession and the sought secondary-profession) would pursue one of the three Orders: For Elementalist, Necromancer, and Mesmer, the character could seek out answers through the Durmand Priory and attain the knowledge needed to preform a minor ritual or some sort, if you would, to become blessed by the God that looms over the sought domain of magic; for Thief, Engineer, and Ranger, one could seek out the Order of Whispers, wishing to further their knowledge in the art of stealthy combat and damage from afar; Warrior and Guardian would rely on the Vigil, where the character could display their prowess in combat to further themselves into one of the two professions. Of course, any of these would be better thought up and rounded out by your team, rather than by myself!

A little bit of expansion further into the actual acquirement of the quest (per se) to seek out a profession, the character could pick up a Personal Story quest from their home location or simply have the quest added similarly to how personal stories are now. My idea was that at level fifty (50) the character would be able to begin the story to become this secondary-profession, allowing them to pursue other options in the game to help better prepare for the onslaught of Risen and otherwise that comes in later levels.

Anywho! That’s an idea I thought that I would submit to you guys! I understand if you don’t use it, you’re a large company with lots of ideas of your own! But, I thank you for taking the time to read this. If you wish to further seek out my idea or you would like me to flesh out a part of it that I happened to leave ambiguous, feel free to reply! Also please don’t hesitate with feedback! I’m just a guy with a weird imagination, if you don’t like parts about it, tell me!

Have a great day, everyone!

Sincerely,
A very satisfied Guild Wars 2 Player

PS: I originally wrote this at around 3 AM, so, of course, there are going to be some weird parts of it, but I still think I got my point across!

It’s an interesting idea and I do think it worth exploring. However, I’d recommend this as a level 80 thing. For a few reasons:

• Minimizes the enormous impact on balancing, dungeons, and story questing from 1-79.
• Allows players to feel like they can “evolve” their character even more after learning a first profession.
• Allows greater creative freedom on what the second class should be (i.e., doesn’t need to be one of the other existing classes) and therefore the variety of encounter types. Again without radically impacting the player onboarding experience of earlier levels and zones.
• Feels like an advanced feature anyway.

I like the idea, but there would be so many things to balance around and too many factors to truly decide how class merging would work. It’s much simpler to make each class separate and it’s also a hell of a lot easier for balancing purposes. What you’ve proposed, while imaginative and well thought out, is simply too complicated to put through as a proper idea in guild wars 2.

Also, a couple of thoughts on the idea itself. How would you merge class mechanics, such as elementalist attunements and warriors burst skills? and for mesmers combining with other classes, how would their abilities to conjure illusions affect the skills of other classes and how would mesmer shatters merge with other class mechanics? what about utility skills? healing skills and elites? would more weapon types emerge for each class, such as the elementalist and the engineer who have no weapon sets in common. How would the merge deal with weapon set mergers,, such as elementalist and warrior as you proposed, where the elementalist has one weapon set and the warrior has two weapon sets?

For most of those answers, having one dominant class would solve half of the problem, but still lead to another range of problems, such as what skill types are dominant, how would skills merge, especially those across different weapon sets. Again with elementalist and engineer where there are no common weapon sets, what skills would have higher merging rate over others? you’d also have to be very careful to not leave out important factors, such as how elementalists have 4 different attunements and how that would work out with other classes if the elementalist is a secondary class, or even if its a primary class.

there are too many problems to solve and fix, alongside the balancing nightmares that would come from not only the old 8 classes, if the option for there to be single classes along side dual classes, as well as the 49 new class combinations that would each have different abilities, if there is a primary and secondary class, or 28 if there is no primary and secondary class.

Like i said earlier, i love the idea. I would personally love to mix the guardian with the necromancer and the mesmer with the guardian, but the difficulty of the task is too much for Anet or for any company for that matter.

Anet is a very small company compared to trion, who even then had to split the different classes into 4 categories that combined well. it would be more like combining clases by armour type that way, only allowing those to mix. but the classes in GW2 are too refined to be able to be combined together, especially the way that skills work in this game.

Every profession as it is now can have close combat and ranged combat weapons. So they have already 2 professions.

That is not the OPs point Ronah. being able to be close quarters or long distance in combat doesnt designate what a class is. It’s the unique capability of handling a situation. Rangers are a class that use pets, Mesmers use illusions, etc. A mesmer with a mainhand sword is not a different class from a mesmer that uses a staff, since both summon illusions to deal with their enemy and they both have the same profession mechanics.

what the OP wants is warriors to be able to use elementalist spells in combo with warrior abilities, for thieves to summon minions and steal health, for guardians to conjure illusions etc.

delmarqo.5038:

It’s an interesting idea and I do think it worth exploring. However, I’d recommend this as a level 80 thing. For a few reasons:

• Minimizes the enormous impact on balancing, dungeons, and story questing from 1-79.
• Allows players to feel like they can “evolve” their character even more after learning a first profession.
• Allows greater creative freedom on what the second class should be (i.e., doesn’t need to be one of the other existing classes) and therefore the variety of encounter types. Again without radically impacting the player onboarding experience of earlier levels and zones.
• Feels like an advanced feature anyway.

First off, thank you! I tried to stay as imaginative as possible; nobody likes a Boring-Barney! Secondly, I agree — It is much more simple to have professions separate, but, the simple has been thrown out the window (In my own opinion) with Guild Wars 2! Take for instance, the downed mechanic, and revive mechanic. Although they are relatively simple to understand mechanic-wise, I’m sure that ArenaNet spent loads of time developing and perfecting them and their coding. I do agree that it is, indeed, complicated. The idea is quite large and could be vastly expansive and time consuming. Still, I think it’s a fair suggestion, though the staff could decide to pick parts from it that would be easier to incorporate and simply expand on them, and it’d still be fun, I think!

Ronah.2869:

Every profession as it is now can have close combat and ranged combat weapons. So they have already 2 professions.

Indeed they can! But, those are weapon skills, my friend! I’m talking about mechanic merging that creates an all-new profession, rather than switching from melee to ranged! Thanks for your post!

castlemanic.3198:

That is not the OPs point Ronah. being able to be close quarters or long distance in combat doesnt designate what a class is. It’s the unique capability of handling a situation. Rangers are a class that use pets, Mesmers use illusions, etc. A mesmer with a mainhand sword is not a different class from a mesmer that uses a staff, since both summon illusions to deal with their enemy and they both have the same profession mechanics.

what the OP wants is warriors to be able to use elementalist spells in combo with warrior abilities, for thieves to summon minions and steal health, for guardians to conjure illusions etc.

That’s essentially exactly what I was saying! Except, Thieves summoning Minions!? That sounds a tad goofy! Maybe I should think about how that would work, haha. Thank you for the reply, though!

castlemanic.3198:

I like the idea, but there would be so many things to balance around and too many factors to truly decide how class merging would work. It’s much simpler to make each class separate and it’s also a hell of a lot easier for balancing purposes. What you’ve proposed, while imaginative and well thought out, is simply too complicated to put through as a proper idea in guild wars 2

Also, a couple of thoughts on the idea itself. How would you merge class mechanics, such as elementalist attunements and warriors burst skills? and for mesmers combining with other classes, how would their abilities to conjure illusions affect the skills of other classes and how would mesmer shatters merge with other class mechanics? what about utility skills? healing skills and elites? would more weapon types emerge for each class, such as the elementalist and the engineer who have no weapon sets in common. How would the merge deal with weapon set mergers,, such as elementalist and warrior as you proposed, where the elementalist has one weapon set and the warrior has two weapon sets?

For most of those answers, having one dominant class would solve half of the problem, but still lead to another range of problems, such as what skill types are dominant, how would skills merge, especially those across different weapon sets. Again with elementalist and engineer where there are no common weapon sets, what skills would have higher merging rate over others? you’d also have to be very careful to not leave out important factors, such as how elementalists have 4 different attunements and how that would work out with other classes if the elementalist is a secondary class, or even if its a primary class.

there are too many problems to solve and fix, alongside the balancing nightmares that would come from not only the old 8 classes, if the option for there to be single classes along side dual classes, as well as the 49 new class combinations that would each have different abilities, if there is a primary and secondary class, or 28 if there is no primary and secondary class.

Like i said earlier, i love the idea. I would personally love to mix the guardian with the necromancer and the mesmer with the guardian, but the difficulty of the task is too much for Anet or for any company for that matter.

Anet is a very small company compared to trion, who even then had to split the different classes into 4 categories that combined well. it would be more like combining clases by armour type that way, only allowing those to mix. but the classes in GW2 are too refined to be able to be combined together, especially the way that skills work in this game.

As for Mesmer combining with other classes, I would say this is where it gets even more complicated and complex, so I’ll try to be clear as possible! And, let me say, this is one of the hardest professions to combine with another in regards to mechanics, so I hope you’re pleased with what I’ve come up with.

Lets say a Mesmer decided to choose Thief as its second Profession. Well, first, what is a Thief’s main theme of play? Temporary stealth that creates new abilities that play into the overall idea of being an Assassin-esque character, and the evasion of attacks from enemy(s). Now, the Mesmer would adapt this playstyle thought, rounding their abilities out to be more focused on temporary stealth (granted by illusionary abilities or otherwise) that cause the character to leap out of combat, and reappear in a new (and sometimes safer) spot in the battle. The character would still keep the Mesmer’s shattering skills no matter the second profession (I’ll explain how this would work with other classes later). To elaborate, I’ll give you an example of an ability that conjures an Illusion and then the ability to shatter the illusion:

(To be continued in next post)

(Continuing)

The Thief-Mesmer combo, or Mesmer-Thief combo (either combination will work the same way), now has an ability from wielding a dagger-dagger weapon set called “Illusionary Heartseeker”. The ability lunges the character at the enemy, summoning an illusion while in motion to confuse the enemy, leaving them open for a strike, and dealing damage until the enemy dies or the illusion is killed or shattered. The base strike by the character would, also, deal damage. As for shatters, each base-profession or second-profession that deals with Mesmer would have Shatters (no matter the clase — including Engineers, Elementalists, and Guardians, who all deal with F1-F4 skills. I would explain this further, but it’s extremely time consuming and complicated, use your imagination!) would have their main theme merged into the shatters. (IE: A Mesmer-Thief, as we’ve been talking about, would have a shatter that Deals damage and Blinds enemies. The animation would be the illusion turning into a cloud of smoke. The same would be incorporated with all classes, and center around their main theme.)

Utility skills, like weapon skills, would be a combination of the original theme. Healing skills and elites are also under this umbrella.

Weapon skills, indeed, would emerge further based on the combination, and even be taken away as a minor drawback. As you said, the Elementalist an Engineer, who have no weapon sets in common, who use Staves, scepters, pistols, daggers, rifles, shields, and focis, would lose a small amount (or majority depending on the logic of the combination and otherwise) of them. IE: The Engineer-Elementalist would lose Shields, while gaining daggers, and the Elementalist-Engineer would lose Scepter, but gain pistols.

As for the merge with weapon sets, all class combinations would receive -two- weapon sets, making the Elementalist-Warrior combo still able to use a Greatsword, and switch out to a staff, etc.

You’re absolutely right. Weapon skill sets that are unused by another class, but used by the secondary, would either be cut, or have a fresh set of skills to fit the base class and the secondary, so it’s still kind of a merger. ArenaNet would be the brains for what skills would have a higher merger rate over another. I’d, personally, love to go into detail about it, but that really only is up to them. (Ok, I’m kind of copping out on this one, I’m exhausted from this reply already!)

There would be a lot of problems, yes, too many? I wouldn’t think that! My opinion is that it’s a huge task, definitely one that would be time and money consuming, but I think it’d be one of the most amazing additions to a game that we’ve seen in a long time!

I would partially agree that it’s a difficult task — One that I’d personally say is on par with creating an expansion with loads of PvE and PvP content, but I think this could definitely be a major — Excuse me, gigantinormous — addition, even if only parts are used! I definitely have a lot of faith that if they took it on, ArenaNet could handle the task of getting this done. I mean, they created Guild Wars 2, after all, and we all know that was just amazing.

I, honestly, have no idea the size ArenaNet has, so I really couldn’t comment on that, but if they are a relatively small company, then I feel bad for throwing up such a large idea!

posts too long for me to possibly read, but from what i got, you want to create a new class from the merging of other two? that’s… interesting, if it didn’t mean complete hell to balance as well as putting out content (you suddenly have 64 classes instead of 8 ), not to mention it would render the current classes useless.

BrunoBRS.5178:

posts too long for me to possibly read, but from what i got, you want to create a new class from the merging of other two? that’s… interesting, if it didn’t mean complete hell to balance as well as putting out content (you suddenly have 64 classes instead of 8 ), not to mention it would render the current classes useless.

Sorry that it’s too long for you! Dx
I admit, it is pretty lengthy. It’s more like an essay than a post!

Balance would definitely be an issue. It’d be a massive change for the game, and it’s still pretty darn young. I definitely agree. But, it definitely wouldn’t render the current classes useless! This is just a fun idea of merging a character with another profession! Complete with drawbacks (that I’m still working on, and will be posted later) and otherwise!

Thanks for the reply! =D

on the plus side, your dual profession idea is better than the others i’ve seen, which feel tacked-on and can usually be countered within a line. like the person that suggested that the secondary profession would only give access to the utilities. suddenly, you can have a thief with access to two skills that give quickness. what would follow is the thief (and quickness) being nerfed to hell and back.

so i decided to skim the OP again because you’re not the kind of person that screams at people that disagree with them.

your idea sounds a lot like the typical profession specializing/evolving mechanic seen in many other MMOs (an archer becomes a hunter, a warrior becomes a knight, that kind of stuff), but with the ‘twist’ of that specialization being based on one of the other “core” professions.

i stand by the point that every class becoming 8 would become impossible to balance and even more impossible to put out effective content to everyone (they’ll have to add new skills eventually, if they have 64 professions to worry about, each individual profession will get much less attention).

Instead of just combining 2 professions for a dual-profession system and it being a balancing problem, why not have each slotted tier (heals, 1 point, 3 points, 6 points, 10 points, and 30 points) gain an empty skill slot that when a secondary profession is chosen they are able to unlock 1 skill from the chosen profession at 10x the points that skill is required to unlock for that class. Reasoning (lore-wise) being our characters don’t start their professions the minute we start playing, they’re suppose to have studied and practiced forever before we played and can’t be an “expert” at the other profession the instant they learn it.

BrunoBRS.5178:

so i decided to skim the OP again because you’re not the kind of person that screams at people that disagree with them.

your idea sounds a lot like the typical profession specializing/evolving mechanic seen in many other MMOs (an archer becomes a hunter, a warrior becomes a knight, that kind of stuff), but with the ‘twist’ of that specialization being based on one of the other “core” professions.

i stand by the point that every class becoming 8 would become impossible to balance and even more impossible to put out effective content to everyone (they’ll have to add new skills eventually, if they have 64 professions to worry about, each individual profession will get much less attention).

Lol, thanks! I try! I value everybody’s opinion, even if it’s different than my own!

Oh? That’s interesting! I definitely agree with you on that point. It does kind of seem like that. Though, mine differs a little bit in the fact this is merging two different classes, rather than advancing into another, more buffed version! But I definitely understand where you’re coming from, and I agree.

Hrm. I definitely see your concern, it’s very much a valid and logical one, too! But, I said earlier, I have faith in ArenaNet; if serious balance issues arose (which they’re bound to, either way), I would firmly stand by the thought of them being able to adequately fix them with a hastey swoop of their awesome skills.

With any addition or major change, my suggestion, could very much interrupt and easily disrupt the delicate profession balance that’s still being tweaked. If this idea were to be implemented, I would seriously hope that it wouldn’t be for a long time, and I would also hope that it would go through rigorous testing to make sure it’s pressed and ironed as much as possible! But, it’s still just a suggestion! If I’m honest, I very much doubt ArenaNet to take part in it or take it and run around the block until it’s what they want it to be. I just thought it’d be nice to express my creative, little (massive and kitten suggestion!

Jasott.7914:

Instead of just combining 2 professions for a dual-profession system and it being a balancing problem, why not have each slotted tier (heals, 1 point, 3 points, 6 points, 10 points, and 30 points) gain an empty skill slot that when a secondary profession is chosen they are able to unlock 1 skill from the chosen profession at 10x the points that skill is required to unlock for that class. Reasoning (lore-wise) being our characters don’t start their professions the minute we start playing, they’re suppose to have studied and practiced forever before we played and can’t be an “expert” at the other profession the instant they learn it.

I, actually, love that idea! I think that could be very interesting and very nice to have! It would also help keep the insane balance issues down to a minimum! You should make that a thread, honestly! It sounds very cool.

Agreed. Lore should have a much firmer grip on my suggestion, which is why, I thought (but didn’t end up putting in the OP) that the adventure to aquiring the second profession could very much be similar to an alternative character storyline.

well the reason i bring balance is because balance is the very reason ANet walked away from dual professions. balancing was hell because of all the tiny variables, all the possible combinations, etc.

Maybe you could have secondary like capabilities, like having a unique trait tree for that specific mix of primary and secondary profession:

Say you roll a guardian and you want choose secondary necromancer, giving access to the trait lines “Unholy Corruption” and “Life Mastery”. At level 80 you have your 70 trait points and an addition 20 for your secondary trait list(these points could either help passive attributes like normal trait lines, or have no passive affect). So you put all 20 points into Life Mastery, and unlike normal traits, you gain access to a two minors 5&10, and one major trait at 15.

Each Proffesion combo would have their own special traits like shown above, now to go along with that, each combo would have a small pool of skills containing elements of both Proffs. War primary with Engi seconday gains access to skills; Shoulder cannon kit, Magnetic Weaponry(attacks can’t be evaded), and so on..

Since only each combo would have access to its specific set of abilities, it would avoid the issues Gw1 had with any proffesion using any skills.

Sorry if I copied any other ideas Im tired and didn’t feel like reading the other post completely.

mattizilla.8451:

castlemanic.3198:

That is not the OPs point Ronah. being able to be close quarters or long distance in combat doesnt designate what a class is. It’s the unique capability of handling a situation. Rangers are a class that use pets, Mesmers use illusions, etc. A mesmer with a mainhand sword is not a different class from a mesmer that uses a staff, since both summon illusions to deal with their enemy and they both have the same profession mechanics.

what the OP wants is warriors to be able to use elementalist spells in combo with warrior abilities, for thieves to summon minions and steal health, for guardians to conjure illusions etc.

That’s essentially exactly what I was saying! Except, Thieves summoning Minions!? That sounds a tad goofy! Maybe I should think about how that would work, haha. Thank you for the reply, though!

no problem. I also your other quite long comments and while the idea seems great, it needs a lot of refining to be honest. However, I’d be more happy to go down that path with you, as i’m also hoping to be a game designer in the future.

For starters, i would say ultimately pick between thief-mesmer and mesmer-thief being the same or different. You seem to be on the edge between having a primary-secondary merger and a complete merging of the two classes, so it would be an important step to take before you go on.

While having a full merger between two classes would be a little more difficult than primary warriors with secondary elementalists when it comes skill wise, it would ultimately create less balancing problems (because you wouldn’t have that aweful number of 64 classes to balance).

on the flip side, making it 64 classes would make it easier to define which characteristics of each professions goes through. If it’s a mesmer-thief, it’s primarily illusions and secondary stealthy and it’s a much easier target to reach than a complete merging of two different classes.

Also, there needs to be special consideration to those who would want to stick with only one class as well. With a primary-secondary class merger, it’s much less likely to happen because it’s not a completely new class, it’s putting two ideas together with a primary idea taking hold. That line of thought would have a much easier time of making the core classes obsolete in my opinion.

those are my thoughts so far, but you came up with the idea, it’s your choice how to go forth from here.