Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty sure this has been said time and time again, but I just went back to playing GW1 today for a few hours, and darn it all if it’s still not the best part of them. Developers at Arenanet. Please…I beg you….let players have second professions in the next expansion. I am not even kidding on how much money I would throw at you for a copy of that expansion. Why? Because it is just too darn fun! I mean, think about the combinations that could come from it. A guardian that summons undead minions, or an elementalist that shadowsteps behind an enemy to barrage them with ice, or…dare I dream…a ranger that has their pet come at them from one side while reading down on the other WITH A FLAMETHROWER. There are so many possibilities and so many ways to enjoy this. I will even start a petition if that’s what it takes. a petition and my money, what more could you ask for? Please, someone there, just think it over. I’m sure it won’t be easy, and Lyssa knows how many tweaks you would have to make to the weapons mechanics, but I think it’s worth a shot. Living world is okay, but give me something like that and I will deny Blizzard three times before the rooster crows.

While I agree it could be incredibly fun, I believe it would also be incredibly hard to balance. Gw2 mechanics are arguably more complex than gw1, and at this stage, this kind of changes would mess up balance so much it would require unrealistic time and efforts to make it work. I believe that e-spec are (if they release more than 1 per class…) the best way to have the diversity you are talking about while keeping balance under control.

As one who didn’t play GW1 while it was running (bought it after i fell for GW2), I really prefer how GW2 works professions wise, though that’s just my opinion.
As already said, the balancing would be immense. Furthermore I simply don’t think there’s enough professions to make it work as it is now.

Elite specializations are as close as we are going to get to that probably.

There is a limited range of play styles in this game. The big ones are DPS, Condi, Healing, Support. I imagine that the elite specializations will, in time, flesh out all professions to be able to easily take on any of these roles, which completely removes the largest benefit a second profession could bring.

Notwithstanding the horror of the idea of the Bearthrowers, the reincarnated Bearbows.

Anet wont do this ever. They already said the next expansion they will add another elite line which they picked over the idea of secondary professions. It means its easier for them and they can control balancing better, though the elites will always be more OP than reg builds to get people to buy the next expansions.

Always loved the secondary prof option in GW1 and I personally found it gave GW1 way more life than it would have had without it. But gw2 team wants to limit the gamelife and the amount of skills we can use as well as limit the weapons each profession can equip.

But yeah this option they said a while ago is off the table and wont ever be a thing in GW2. Anet again ignoring their customers.

clone wars.9568:

Anet wont do this ever. They already said the next expansion they will add another elite line which they picked over the idea of secondary professions. It means its easier for them and they can control balancing better, though the elites will always be more OP than reg builds to get people to buy the next expansions.

The bolded part is not anything ANet has said; in fact, they’ve stated the intent to have the elites be comparable, just different. I agree that the elites do feel stronger, and may well have induced some sales. However, your paragraph structure implies a continuation of “they said” and the latter part of the paragraph is your opinion, not a dev statement.

OP, as noted by an above poster, balance is the issue. ANet has said, repeatedly, that the GW1 system was a balancing nightmare and they don’t want a comparable bloat in GW2.

I just wish we didn’t have to wait for expansions to get elites, especially if it’s only one elite per profession per expansion. If the next one offers at least two elites per profession, that will inject a lot of choice and make me quite happy.

Not going to happen.

Elite specs are the replacement for that mechanic, because they are far easier to balance. The entire reason they reworked traits in to spec lines was to support this, so that they could more easily extend build options and ensure that there was virtually no power creep as more elite specs were added, since they are never adding more core specs, and you can never equip more than one elite spec at a time.

Elite traits, all traits, are the sub-job. They are just much more tightly controlled to prevent OP combinations and even more balance work.

Hell no. What would happen is that people will pair the classes with the highest damage and lowest survivability with the classes with highest survivability and lowest damage. It wouldn’t be remotely balanced. Classes that you can’t kill that also deal far more damage than anyone else can possibly deal.

Your 3 trait lines are your classes, basically.

an Air Water Arcane ele is quite different to a Fire Earth Tempest ele

what we need is an elite spec trait slot, instead of it taking over a core trait line. Maybe not right now since we only have 1 Spec, but when we get the 2nd Specs I think we need to have 4 trait lines.

THAT will be as long as we can get to having dual professions. As it is right now, Elite specs Nerf many of the core builds in order to take them. Granted a ton of balancing has been done around it, but Elite shouldn’t be any stronger then Core builds, it should just be a new way to play your class.

OriOri.8724:

Hell no. What would happen is that people will pair the classes with the highest damage and lowest survivability with the classes with highest survivability and lowest damage. It wouldn’t be remotely balanced. Classes that you can’t kill that also deal far more damage than anyone else can possibly deal.

If you visit WvW, we have that now. It’s all without dual professions, but afaics, it’s all due to Elite Specs.

I miss the dual professions from GW1. Going back to that is something that won’t happen. I think they missed the mark on it. They could have done meta-professions (combinations of two professions). Engineer+Thief=scrapper, Ranger+Monk=druid, Warrior+Thief=Assassin, Warrior+Guardian=Revenant, etc.

I miss being able to choose my profession after I create my character. I think that missing in the game takes away a lot of the early learning a new character.

IndigoSundown.5419:

OriOri.8724:

Hell no. What would happen is that people will pair the classes with the highest damage and lowest survivability with the classes with highest survivability and lowest damage. It wouldn’t be remotely balanced. Classes that you can’t kill that also deal far more damage than anyone else can possibly deal.

If you visit WvW, we have that now. It’s all without dual professions, but afaics, it’s all due to Elite Specs.

Elite specializations are over powered compared to core but they were designed for HoT PvE, which is odd because raids prefer core Necromancer over Reaper.

I just confused myself.

Heh … dual classing would be so broken at the point that it would require redoing all professions from the ground up.

As it is now with the Elite Specs we already have a dual class system, quite a few meta builds work with two class mechanics, and it is the most horrid thing in GW2 PvP ever.

It’s one of the reasons some builds feel so strong.

So honestly, no, as long as the next patch isn’t going to drastically change a few things i’d say they still can’t balance dual classes.

And i’m saying this as someone who still loves GW1 and was playing it, practically, since day one.
It just doesn’t work in this system and Elite Specs in their current form are proof of that.

Games have to be designed to fit a dual class system to make this work. Classes in this game are already more versatile and well rounded than what some dual or even tripple class system games allow you to play.
This would open up a million different combinations and possibilities and would require about as much work to actually balance properly. There are already so many runes, sigils, utilities, gear stats combinations, etc to begin with.

Also, really don’t want to see another game like ArcheAge where everyone was able to run Shadowplay just for the stealth to make most builds even more obnoxious than they already were.

Also I think dual classing is a bit “wasteful”(couldn’t think of a better description). Since you would need to balance every combination anyway then you might as well go with a system like Path of Exile (https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree) where every class could theoretically reach any node but there is a different opportunity cost for each. A Ranger could get the +1 curses node but is probably better off sacrificing a ring, boot or amulet slot instead.

With dual profs, GW1 had 42,158,249,256 potential builds and people still mostly stuck to 2-3 per prof (with variations so minor that they wouldn’t get documented). GW2 has far fewer potential builds and I find that I make use of more of them (when I’m in the mood to build swap without templates).

Overall, I far prefer the GW2 system.

While I wouldn’t mind account wide waypoint unlocks I don’t think it really needs to be changed. It’s easy enough to push a character thru a map to get to where you need to be.