Guild Wars 2

I took a break from the game, and having recently returned, one thing that stands out to me that I don’t remember seeing before is open world enemy NPC’s using profession skills effectively in combat. I notice the Lake Doric area has lots of Mesmer NPCs that use quite a few mesmer skills against you when you fight them.

Is this new? Are there other open world NPCs using other profession skills in combat?

Bloodstone Fen also has white mantle mobs that use profession skills, but not nearly as many as the mobs in Lake Doric.

It’s almost exclusively White Mantle and allies that use profession skills, for example Braham will use guardian skills.

I do think it adds to the immersion of the game. When we were fighting Risen they were basically zombies and Mordrem were their own thing. White Mantle are humans, so it should be expected they use skills available to humans.

What might be cool is to go back and retrofit to some degree other playable races with some skills, like nightmare court and inquest.

Hesacon.8735:

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What might be cool is to go back and retrofit to some degree other playable races with some skills, like nightmare court and inquest.

Indeed, still think the most fun npc’s to fight in the game are the “npc test dummies” in the PVP map. All the grunts and veterans in the open world are just walking sandbags. And the Champions half the time is just titanic hp sponges. No fun to fight.