Guild Wars 2

This question may have already been asked and answered, but I’m curious about what it takes to acquire a specialization in HoT. Say, for example, that I want my level 80 Ranger to become a Druid at the launch of the expansion. How does this process work? Does a window pop up and say “Gratz your can specialize now!”? Or do you go to an NPC or need to cash in materials? Does anyone have any information on this?

More importantly, I am curious about changing specializations. Say that my Ranger is now a Druid and I really enjoy that play style in WvW. Okay, this is great, I’m enjoying my WvW experience, but let’s also say that the Druid skills and play style aren’t what I want for dungeons. Let’s assume that the other specialization is precisely what I want for dungeon and other PvE exploration. Do I have access to this other profession, having already chosen Druid?

I think this is a very interesting question because it seems to be in a grey area in Anet’s game philosophy. They give us extreme freedom to customize characters in the current GW2. Changing traits, skills and gear is extremely easy, which allows a player to explore many play styles for a given profession. I believe that this is a very positive trait and my hat goes off to Anet for it. However, there are two things that no player has ever been able to change: profession and race. Obviously it doesn’t make sense for an Asura Mesmer to suddenly explode into a Charr Guardian. However, I do not know where changing specializations falls. Is it considered to be a more permanent profession choice? Will changing specializations be as easy as changing your skills? Will interaction with an NPC and potentially a fee be in place?

I want to know what everyone’s thoughts are in this topic. I can’t seem to decide what stance Anet would take on this issue and I haven’t found anyone directly addressing it.

They have not told us how one first specializes, though I believe you must have an 80 of the base profession at the very least. They have said that you can swap back and forth from spec to base any time you like out of combat, and that once there is more than one spec per profession you can hop between all the options. Sorry I don’t have links but that latter is directly said by Colin in his interview with Angry Joe.

To be clear, the 80 requirement is my own speculation based on them talking about this as an answer to post-80 horizontal progression. The rest is stuff I have read or heard from devs via these forums and videos.

LCV.7245:

Okay, this is great, I’m enjoying my WvW experience, but let’s also say that the Druid skills and play style aren’t what I want for dungeons. Let’s assume that the other specialization is precisely what I want for dungeon and other PvE exploration. Do I have access to this other profession, having already chosen Druid?

ArenaNet said HoT will only have one specialization per profession. A second specialization will very likely take a very, VERY long time. Any reply they give now could change between now and when the other specializations arrive.

They said that swapping between your ranger for example and druid is a matter of getting out of combat and swapping back and forth as you will. And I can only assume this will be the case when we get more specializations for each class.
As of how we get the specialization we still need to wait for the deep dive on them to know.

Only thing I can add is that the GW2 wiki and various articles specifically say that rangers can learn to become druids in the new Heart of Maguuma zone. So it definitely won’t just be a window popping up saying gratz or visiting a random trainer.

Just my guess, but I would expect some kind of story mission attached to it. Especially since as it currently stands, flesh and blood druids don’t exist amongst the playable races. So there’s bound to be some explanation for their return.