Guild Wars 2

OK, let’s see:

1. Learned recipes to make lots of different feasts, armour satchels, etc., all of which are currently utterly useless (at present, crafting most feasts somehow destroys value rather than adding it).
2. Unlocked several hundred gold in dyes on multiple characters rather than selling them. Naturally, virtually all of the freebies I got after the April 2014 feature pack were common dyes that I already had.
3. Radically changed all of my keybinds right before doing a fractal. Even people who’ve seen me play normally would probably be surprised at how badly I sucked that run.
4. Standing close to a wall while trying to defend a fort from mordrem teragriffs. Pretty sure that Warmaster Gritblade is still trying to pick bits of ranger out of his armour a week later.

Try kidnapping a mesmer to help you out.

Mantra of Concentration and Mantra of Resolve both cleanse fear instantly in an AoE around the caster, and both can be used three times before going on cooldown if you have the right traits.

Mesmers also have a heal skill which works while feared and can be traited to cleanse conditions, with a very short cooldown.

In part, this is essentially how FFXIV handles DoTs. The rest of it is a matter of having a larger DoT cap and trying to avoid content that attracts big enough zergs to run into it.

I assume that there is some reasoning behind why the devs didn’t make things like condition damage snapshot, but I’ve never heard what it is.

My personal instinct would be to count up total damage over time amounts, so that e.g., a stack of bleed appears for every 7% of your hp that you’re about to lose to bleeding.

However, that risks playing havoc with condi removal (I guess it would have to remove a stack at a time?), damaging the distinction between burning and bleeding, and gets weird with conditions that aren’t pure damage or that punish certain acts, such as confusion, torment, poisson, and terror.

You should be able to complete that achievement, actually.

The heirloom toy chest you used to get from killing Grawnk with food now drops from Giant Wintersday Gifts (which come from the tree that you get from that achievement), and they’re currently selling very cheaply on the TP.

EDIT: Scratch that, brain not working this week. It’s a different collection. Lame.

OK, here’s a worrying thought.

Unless I’m mistaken, I’m not alone in thinking that the “zerker meta problem” that some people see is mostly just a case of content being in place for so long that a sizeable chunk of the player base effectively considers it to be on farm. Simply releasing new content, as long as it’s reasonably high-quality, will make the ‘problem’ go away for the most part.

But we have a problem. If you can farm ‘zerkable’ content for decent gold per hour, what does the less-zerkable content have to offer before you’ll do it? Even though players do actually come to the game for fun and challenge, they will still happily optimise both of those things out of the experience if that lets them ‘win more’ — or, in context, earn more ‘rewards’.

In this context, doing the less-zerkable content is massively less rewarding — it will take a long time before you can put the content on farm and go back to your original gold/hour or better. And if you resort to training wheel gear to get through the less-zerkable content, after investing vast quantities of gold, laurels, and skill points into your zerk gear, you’re not going to be happy.

So what do people think ANet is doing to prevent that? Nerfing gold rewards from existing dungeons doesn’t sound like it would be well-received. And having new content give massively higher gold/hour would simply cause the economy itself to punish players for running older content.

Keenan Sieg.1493:

Hey evilunderling, is the sound you’re referring to with the “Call of the Wild” the electric crackle?

I think it would fit that description, but it’s not the first sound I’d imagine if I heard that description.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Do you even read what you’re writing? This isnt random open-world trash mobs we’re talking about. I mean, clearly you’ve not run CoF and had hellstorms chasing you down. They eat your face off regardless of your armor and stats. Not even protection saves you most times.

I said “often”, not “all the time”. And yes, I did read what I wrote, and I’m not talking about open world trash mobs.

thefantasticg.3984:

Sadly, Anet Devs read bad suggestion threads like this, even if they don’t comment, and need to be shown that OP has a bad suggestion, just incase they couldn’t see it for themselves.

Telling people that someone’s suggestion is bad and that they just shouldn’t read it, instead of elaborating on why it’s bad, is not a compelling counterargument. And threads like this can be interesting, can produce new suggestions that aren’t bad, and ideally serve to educate the people making bad suggestions if nothing else.

Lazaar.9123:

Deluded much?

I don’t make copypasta jokes very often, so you’re asking a lot if you expect them to be any good.

But to be fair, I did miss your other posts in this thread, I just assumed you were posting something in the same vein as the other guy I quoted.

I’ve observed similar odd sounds using the ranger warhorn skill “Call of the Wild”, usually immediately before the howling wolf part of the animation.

I presume, however, that all of this comes from the same basic issue.

Most heals in the game that could theoretically be ‘abused’ to make a zerker character too tanky have inherent weaknesses already, so in so far as this is a problem, a better solution would come in the form of changes to content.

A similar principle applies to the question of how to make sure that zerker stats are only used by a tiny, elite, few, a goal that I don’t think anyone has a particular problem with.

thefantasticg.3984:

These “nerf zerker” threads are just like those “holy trinity” threads that just need to be auto-closed.

If the fact that people see fit to discuss things like this somehow offends you, then I’m afraid that’s too bad. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and making you participate. In much the same way that nobody is holding a gun to some zerkerhater and making them join full-zerk parties in LFG.

Brahmincorle.1264:

This game has only DPS spec which mean DPS stats will always dominate… It may not be zerker but assassins or something new or whatever equipment with most power, precision and ferocity on it.

This game doesn’t have the DPS role any more than it has the tank role or the healer role. It just has the generic “everyone can do damage” principle that’s true of every MMO.

Funnily enough, in every other MMO, the only times people spec for anything but maximum DPS are when they don’t think they can survive content otherwise and when they expect the personal DPS they sacrifice to be more than made up for by a boost to someone else’s DPS. Sound familiar?

Vizardlorde.8243:

Unless they add unavoidable 15k hits and 15k heals in every fight, the Zerker meta isn’t going anywhere.

Mesmers can already come up with something like a total of 10,000 self-healing every 12 seconds with the right build, not counting the effect of healing power. It’s not considered overpowered because it involves mantras, which don’t cooldown fully on their own.

Why do I have a stock answer to this sort of question? Anyway, here goes:

Zerker will naturally cease to be the default for running the new content when it is released, assuming that it’s as challenging as advertised, regardless of the intent of the designers, since both the content and the tools available to players for tackling the content will be unfamiliar to players and it will take some time for them to adapt.

Otherwise, if the meta does change, it will change to include Rampager’s and Sinister gear, which are both similarly glassy but favour conditions.

The real problem you are complaining about has nothing to do with the Zerker meta.

I love how you literally complain about getting flamed and claim that that somehow says something about the community in your unedited OP before anyone could even have had the opportunity to reply to you.

Marthkus.4615:

High deeps means you have to dodge less attacks. Thus less skilled require.

High defence means that you have to dodge zero attacks, because they’ll never kill you. Thus, no skill required. Period.

And please don’t try to claim that mob damage is high enough to be a threat to non-zerker players — in reality, it’s often barely enough to threaten zerkers, and is only a serious threat to nudes.

A thing worth remembering, of course, is that skipping trash is something that GW2 does well.

It’s actually a part of every MMO, and trinity MMOs can actually make it easier than breathing for most players in a group — just have a tank perform a sacrifice pull and kite dozens of mobs out of the way of the rest of the group.

Compare and contrast GW2, where you usually have to do at least some work to skip past trash. It actually makes more sense to go further, make this into the default approach to dungeons, rather than having it be a potential way to optimise fun out of the game.

thefantasticg.3984:

D_f_q you smoking? That comparison is so far off it’s not … Really, whatchu smoking? Did you read the thread title or the OP? That’s exactly what it’s about. Mod’s need an auto-close macro for these kinds of threads.

The OP might be wrong about what the problem is or how to fix it, but that doesn’t mean that there is nothing wrong. Threads like this are about the problem, not about what the OP says the problem is or how the OP thinks it should be fixed.

And either way, they don’t stop having value just because you don’t like them, either.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Where was this confirmed? This is the first I’ve seen or heard of it.

The trailer didn’t confirm it, but did hint at it, same as with thieves and rifles (i.e., an adventurer wielding a rifle showed up who didn’t look like an engi, and a scholar wielding a sword showed up who didn’t look like a mesmer).

phys.7689:

and i was specifically commenting on what you were saying about healing being complex because of these variables, which are missing regardless to healing existing or not.
what im trying to say is, the trinity isnt what leads to these poor fights, its just poorly designed fights in general.

I mostly agree. I was specifically responding to the people who regard healing as just a pointless exercise in watching red bars.

Consider this sort of thing:

• Twintania marks the dragoon for a fireball. The white mage knows who’s going to take the hit, so she targets and stacks on the dragoon (fireball does split damage, so this prevents her teammate from being one-shotted), pops Surecast (otherwise, the fireball would interrupt her heal), and begins casting Cure III (a big, expensive TAoE heal) when Twintania turns to cast the fireball.
• Twintania’s Death Sentence attack is up. The off-tank anticipates it, and provokes her, causing her to change targets and hit him with the incoming heal debuff instead of placing it on the main tank. The white mage sees what’s happening, and casts regen on the off-tank as Twintania begins her death sentence cast, circumventing the debuff.

Now compare it to this:

• The guardian, ranging a boss, sees a tell for something like Dagger Storm. She runs towards the boss and pops shield of absorption. The rest of the group realises what’s happening and stacks on her for defence from the projectiles.

The thought process isn’t actually different, is it? One thing we definitely didn’t gain from abandoning the trinity is some new, proactive combat paradigm.

Note that none of these examples are strictly how groups do things.

phys.7689:

once again, you are mixing in healing with more complex fight design. Most of the fights in the game dont require you to pay attention to what others are doing, watch for telegraphs, or anticipate. It is not a lack of trinity that is the issue, it is fights/encounters that were not designed with much in mind

“once again”? That was the first time I’ve posted in this thread, and the paragraph I wrote about healing was just an aside, not a major part of what I was saying.

thefantasticg.3984:

Quoted for truth and this thread really could have been closed after this post because this post really just pointed out why these threads are made. As a matter of fact, if the Mods could just set it up a macro to auto close any thread topic that contains the words “Holy Trinity” and put this post in the end, that would be great.

As I just said, despite what the OP said, this thread isn’t really about bringing back the holy trinity and likewise, the nerfzerker threads aren’t really about nerfing zerker.

Your post is like saying that someone with mesothelioma must be just fine because some random dude off the street with no medical training said that it was emphysema.

On one point and one point only, I think the OP is correct. I don’t agree with his assessment of what’s wrong, and I certainly don’t agree with the proposed solution, but I do think that a problem exists and that it’s worth fixing. The question is what, and dismissing every trinity thread and every nerfzerker thread out of hand doesn’t help.

The trinity does bring some baggage with it that I think is well worth doing without. But that doesn’t mean that it was always pointless. The trick is to find ways to get the benefits of the traditional holy trinity without the attendant baggage. And to do that, there needs to be some agreement that there were ever benefits, and on what those benefits were.

The other thing I’ll add is that healing in “the traditional sense” might not be that difficult — you’ll still be saddled with extra roles like extra DPS and prodding stuff with your use key — but it is still significantly more involved — and proactive, for that matter — than it’s made out to be by certain individuals. You need to be keeping an eye on the field, watching for tells and telegraphs, researching and memorising fights, and also paying attention to what everyone else in the group is doing. Good healers anticipate damage and are ready to heal it before it even happens. A healer tunnel-visioned on the party list just filling bars up is a struggling healer, whether that’s because they’re bad, there’s something wrong with other players in the group, both, or neither.

Astralporing.1957:

You see ele with sword and dagger, i see no attunement effects, so i guess it is just a double sword mesmer (the second weapon is not so clearly visible, and can just be a differently skinned sword – there are some with short blades).

Assuming that she is an elementalist, there’s no way you’d see attunement effects. They don’t persist for more than a handful of seconds after stowing a weapon, and we never see her with it drawn.

That said, I looked more closely at the video and embarassingly enough, it turns out that she doesn’t wield an off-hand at all. The ‘dagger’ was actually an optical illusion caused by the skirt.

Even so, I would still take it as evidence, because the general appearance of incarnate armour is far more consistent with elementalist than with mesmer. But it’s not as much as I originally thought.

EDIT: Silly Fenrina, didn’t you know that it’s forbidden to ninja my posts? :P

rotten.9753:

Other gear is not rewarding enough because it’s even easier to play. It’s simple, you can’t have something more rewarding while being easier to play.

Well, ‘easier’ is complicated. Berserker gear certainly should put you at the lowest possible risk of raiders’ fatigue, but if that’s really killing people in a fight that lasts less than a minute, then that’s rather disturbing, frankly.

tigirius.9014:

Anyone who disagrees doesn’t believe in fairness.

No, anyone who disagrees with you… disagrees with you. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s it.

Reflects can one-shot certain enemies; potentially keeping a boss permanently stunlocked is the very definition of lame and every MMO ‘nerfs’ CC one way or another; and several professions can still heal fast enough to be invincible.

Now compare and contrast what happens with berserker gear. It became the norm because people were mastering the content and no longer needed much defence to survive, because we’re talking about content that has been around for two years. It is, for the most part, an example of skilled play defeating things quickly, not an example of people using unintended strategies to deal with things quickly (unintended strategies are generally used to deal with things easily, not quickly, reflects aside).

Oh, and CC is perfectly viable, even in open-world champ events. The only issue with it is that you don’t see many attacks worth interrupting. Add more of those, and you’ll see more CC happening.

What really needs to happen is that all profession hp bonuses need to be halved, possibly even removed. Mesmers are already far too durable in a lot of content.

From Gaile Gray’s comments on the traits megathread, I get the impression that the Spring 2k15 feature pack will be a thing, will hit before the xpac, and will include Traits 3.0. But this is wild speculation, so stay cautious.

Condis should be more effective, yes. Otherwise, the simple presence of new content in the xpac will discourage zerker for a while (for that content, at least), until people get used to it.

Guardians could gain the ability to off-hand something new, such as the dagger, sword, mace, or axe. Or they could gain access to the longbow or rifle, as suggested earlier.

I could see dagger fitting reasonably well with the warrior, although I think there was some talk that the devs were deliberately trying to avoid mainhand dagger on mesmers and warriors since both professions can take a sword off-hand and it would look weird.

I saw something that might have been a guardian reveal earlier, but it seems to have actually been an asura heavy dodging at the exact moment another character used defiant stance in order to confuse everyone. The same character is also visible earlier in the trailer using what looks like a shield, but both warrior and guardian can already do that.

I’m fairly sure that we will be getting one specialisation per profession, but I’m cautiously optimistic that switching to a specialisation will result in a radical change, replacing whole swathes of your skills with new ones.

Even the lower bound for this is still huge, however — we’re getting a minimum of something like 130 new skills to play with out of this deal, and there really are current MMOs that could turn that into five full classes, using individually less rich skills into the bargain. Even here, it’s the equivalent of two classes.

Ferever.7014:

Also wanting to state this as well the term spec means a different way to play a profession not a profession that gets stronger thus limiting the usage of the class. I’m gonna use WoW as an example where you spec your character it works the same way you don’t get stronger just the game style changes.

That’s a different term. ‘spec’ in that sense is short for ‘specification’ (or ‘specify’ when used as a verb), and it basically refers to your choices of talents, glyphs, and whatever else it is that WoW characters get these days.

We’re getting something called ‘specialisations’, which are almost, but not quite entirely unlike FFXIV’s ‘jobs’.

Nike.2631:

I don’t see the words “completely different” on the Heart of Thorns info page.

I do see something similar in the transcript of what Colin said on the livestream, however:

… a new heal skill, a new elite skill, a new set of utility skills, and most importantly, new profession mechanics that fundamentally change the way the ranger plays if they turn into a druid.

That could be anything from six slot skills, a new weapon skill, and losing access to command skills for something else, right up to whole swathes of skills getting replaced. and effectively ten new classes, as I said earlier.

What it’s guaranteed to be is more than FFXIV is getting in terms of classes from their expansion.

They were suggesting that taking on a specialisation will turn your character into something completely new with an entirely new playstyle, not just an upgrade to what you were before.

If true, then one per profession is very substantial, effectively adding ten new classes to the game, each individually far richer than what can pass for a ‘class’ in some modern MMOs these days.

What we have at the present time is far too vague to make a value judgement about.

Well, some of those sound cool, but where did you get guardian longbow from? Or anything hinting at ‘monk’?

I think we’re also assuming that if mesmers do get to be chronomancers, we will also see summoners, which will presumably be the specialisation for one of the other scholars, most likely elementalist, since necromancers already have a whole trait line dedicated to summoning things.

We’ve also been told that there are sadly no actual new weapons at this time, but some polearm skins made it into the game as different weapons. Although I believe the source for this isn’t considered that great, since it was basically some guy on Reddit claiming to have spoken with Colin Johanssen at the afterparty.

Depends on what I’m in the mood for.

My human mesmer is kind of my de-facto main, although I’m currently playing my human ranger for now.

I also have a sylvari guardian levelled, which I still need to get through the rest of the main storyline and LS2 ready for the expac, a human ele who I really need to practice sucking less with, and a human warrior. I also have five alts to level… >.<

I think it’s widely assumed that it’s hinting at the mesmer specialty being Chronomasticator.

GW2 was actually my first MMO. I’ve never touched WoW or any of its expansions, so I can’t really comment on what Mists of Pandaria did right or wrong.

That said, FFXIV is what the talk of specialisations managed to remind me of. That game turned every each of its classes into little more than a single canned build, and it actually worked quite well.

KitOnlyHuman.6807:

They never said that specializations are going to be at end game or high level. My understanding is that we’ll have a choice at, say, level 10 or a low level. “Do you want to be a ranger or druid?” And that more specializations will be added later as GW2 progresses into other expansions and content updates.

My understanding is that the devs have been playing a lot of other MMOs for inspiration. Specialisations are most likely to be compared to FFXIV’s ‘job’ system, which worked as follows while I was playing:

BrotherBelial.3094:

I see you don’t understand how an expansion works in the sence of making money.

The central point here is to pull lapsed players back in and encourage people who decided to give the game a miss previously to take another look. Any income from direct purchases of the box is just icing on the cake.

If you think there’s anything more to add, please feel free to add it.

Spectrum.4985:

In terms of sheer weapon diversity, however, Elementalist and Engineer are very lacking . I’m especially looking forward to what these two classes get.

How diverse can you even be when your skill set already comprises everything including the kitchen sink?

We’ve already seen more new stuff for engis (hammer, drones) and eles (mainhand sword with twelve skills on it) than for mesmers (a shield with two skills on it and maybe a new utility skill) or necros (a greatsword with five skills on it), even though mesmers and necros are both far more in need of new things.

Test.8734:

In B2P games, the more you make the players without the newest purchase feel left behind, the better – because they will feel pressured to buy the new content, without you actually forcing them to do so.

Which is exactly why “microtransaction-based games are healthiest when paying and non-paying player can mingle” — players aren’t going to start feeling left behind if all of the people they’re supposed to be envious of are nowhere to be seen behind some giant wall off playing the new PvE content.

If I had to guess:

• A microtransaction game is at its healthiest when paying and non-paying players can mingle together. From this, it follows that there will be some sort of ‘access programme’ for the new content for non-expansion players, which could be anything from taxiing to coin subs or a non-atomic purchase option.
• I would expect to be able to participate in PvP against revenants without having to purchase the expansion.
• I would not expect to be denied access to the new WvW map at all, and I would presume that the ‘access programme’ I mentioned earlier would extend to Stronghold.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

but on the trailer on the parth with ranger shooting out of staff we can clearly see his pet running to the enemy just after he made a shot…..

We were told in the livestream that the profession mechanic for druids is different to that of rangers, and we know that they’re supposed to have a completely different playstyle.

How that alpine wolf fits into things remains to be seen — it’s entirely possible that animal companions are just summons for a druid, for example.

bushido.8071:

please add new weapons for engineer, because engineer have only double pistol and shield combination alongside rifle for double hand. when we look at guardian and warrior, there weapons choices are huge.

For reference, mesmers are actually the profession with the fewest weapon skills, as shown here.

Engineers get a lot of extra weapon skills from their kits.

Mesmers actually have the fewest skills of any kind in the game, losing out to necromancers once you count lich form and plague form skills.

Looks like you’re right. The blue glow in the video starts when the asura is mid dodge-roll, which I assumed meant that he had the Selfless Daring trait, which heals on dodge-roll, but looking again, it does look like the glow is coming from the girl, which suggests that she’s just using a random heal skill and could be basically anything.

I wonder if they choreographed that video specifically to confuse people?

Abdulaziz.1496:

That was obviously a mesmer.
they’re the only light class that uses sword, and the animation for the skill looks like mesmer’s.

I was joking, although we have evidence that elementalists will gain access to sword in the expansion.

x Charlie.4820:

This isn’t proof. I think a lot of people are forgetting that engineers use rifles and are medium armour.

It isn’t, no. I believe it’s taken as evidence because of the look that the player went for.

As far as I’m aware, even the people who make a point of dressing their female characters up in assassin armour rarely use it for engies, even though they’re eligible to wear it. Likewise, I don’t think many people would put most of the magitech set on a ranger.

In this case, I think this character is taken to look more like a thief or a ranger than an engineer, and since rangers have already had a new weapon reveal, that leaves thief.

I’ve said this before, but there might have been another weapon reveal in the trailer that’s not in the list in the OP. The segment starting here shows a girl dressed in incarnate armour with a stowed sword, which might imply that elementalist will get mainhand sword, if you’re willing to buy that mesmers — who can legitimately use both swords and the incarnate armour skin — wouldn’t normally dress like that.

This shot here might also be a reveal — the character on the right dodging through the fire is a guardian based on the use of Selfless Daring, but while I think he might be dual-wielding something, I can’t make it out.

EDIT: On further inspection, we don’t think that the asura in that scene was using selfless daring: the glow appears to be coming from the heavy he dodges past.

EDIT: And the dagger was an optical illusion. Apparently I’m on the exact opposite of a roll this week…

Stormbolt.7293:

I figured that would be like 10-12 new skills in addition to what you already have. There are some basic skills that a lot of builds need to function, i.e. shadow refuge on thief, blink or decoy on mesmer, etc. It’s a specialization, not a total new class.

Remember that the original game was literally killed by complexity creep.

Currently, there are 1140 possible combinations of utility skills. Adding five utility skills to a profession would increase that number to 2300, more than doubling the number of possible builds. Eight utility skills would allow for 3276 different combiinations, ten would allow for 4060, and twelve would allow for 4960.

Specialisations aren’t a straight dump of new skills, that wouldn’t need an announcement like this, and it wouldn’t do anything to help with the fact that GW2’s classes are still a pain to balance — despite the fact that, when compared to the original, this game has 80 – 90% fewer classes in total and between 57% and 78% fewer skills available to each class (GW1 had 90 classes thanks to the secondary profession mechanic. You could also interpret it as having 45, although there were very real differences between e.g., a mesmer/elementalist and an elementalist/mesmer).

morrolan.9608:

That would be silly and a complete misnomer to call them specialisations.

All of the evidence we currently have implies one per profession, with presumably more in the future. Silly or not, it is what it is.

EDITS: added a response to morrolan.9608, clarified 90% fewer classes, and corrected some typos.

Loki.8793:

Per the livestream, specialising grants “a new set of utility skills”. Or, in other words, you lose every single one of your twenty utility skills and get twenty different skills in exchange, plus modified traits, heals, elites, profession mechanic skills, and existing weapon skills.

That’s theoretically possible, but imagine what that would imply for complexity creep. Adding four new utilities to the list of utilities already available to a profession adds far more possible builds than adding twenty utilities and sticking a wall between them and the existing set.

I think the most likely answer is that there will be a full twenty utility skills per spec, even if some are recycled partially or wholly from the base profession or even other professions so, e.g., a Chronomancer might have portal entre, feedback, and null field but has to exchange veil for the big purple clock thing.

The Arcanist (working title) might lose access to glyphs in favour of their new utilities, especially if they don’t use attunements.

Also, I think we can safely assume that this absolutely isn’t just one new weapon per prof — mesmers already have the fewest skills in the game, so shafting them by giving them just 2 new weapon skills when necros, rangers, and engies — all profs with more skills already — get five each strikes me as unlikely.

Stormbolt.7293:

I think it’s safe to say that we’re getting two or more mutually exclusive specializations per class. Otherwise, the system wouldn’t be much more than a weapon addition.

Per the livestream, specialising grants “a new set of utility skills”. Or, in other words, you lose every single one of your twenty utility skills and get twenty different skills in exchange, plus modified traits, heals, elites, profession mechanic skills, and existing weapon skills.

This isn’t the equivalent of equipping a soul gem to turn into an ‘evolved’ version of your existing class, it’s the equivalent of equipping a soul gem to turn into a completely new class. Basically, GW2’s soul gems are equivalent to FFXIV’s weapons, and FFXIV’s soul gems are roughly equivalent to GW2’s weapons. Not that I expect to see anyone literally equipping a soul gem in GW2.

The whole point here, as I understand it, is to allow more variety for existing characters in the form of new skills, traits, etc. without risking any combinatorics-induced headspolosions (which is also essentially what FFXIV’s class-changing system does).

Perhaps druids could have possession as their F2 (i.e., you press F2 to literally become your pet)? That would help somewhat with the existing pet problems, although it might be seen as lore-inappropriate.

The announcement repeatedly talked about specialisations as if there was one per profession — e.g., “the necromancer specialisation will be able to use greatswords”.

That might not sound like a lot, but these aren’t FFXIV jobs we’re talking about — Colin mentioned that a specialisation gets a new heal, a new elite, and a new set of utilities — that’s 22 skills in total — as well as a new profession mechanic (although it looks like druids will still have pets, so I’m not sure exactly what’’s different for them).

That’s 23 – 26 new skills per specialisation, making the specialisation system into the equivalent of three new professions — ignoring all of the weapon skills, heal skills, and elite skills that cannot be shared between profession and specialisation and would presumably have to be replaced with new skills.

A mesmer without illusions would need at least one skill replaced on every single weapon (2 in the case of sword offhand and the two-handed weapons), plus replacements for Ether Feast and Signet of the Ether.

An elementalist without attunements would need 20 new weapon skills just to cover the existing ele weapons, 20 more new weapon skills from new weapons to bulk out their number of choices to match other professions, and replacements for their healing glyph and elite glyph.

Jim.4680:

Elementalist prof will be able to equip sword

In case anyone is wondering, the evidence for ele swords is a female human wielding sword and dagger and dressed in incarnate armour visible between 1:13 and 1:19 in the trailer.

However, it’s only a complete guess that she’s some sort of elementalist — we never see her use skills, so the only thing we have to go on is that we’ve seen clear reveals of new weapons for necromancer and mesmer already. And the trailer could even be hinting at something crazy like, say, an adventurer who becomes a scholar on switching to their specialisation class.