What's the point of the secondary profession?

ArenaNet said that the secondary skill system was originally implemented to parallel Magic: The Gathering and its tendency to feature deck using two colors of mana. However, unlike MtG, in GW you need to invest a lot of resources into a secondary profession, specifically attribute points and skill slots. (in MtG, usuing a second color takes no more effort than only using one)

99% of the builds I make (and also see) use only skills from the Primary profession. You only have 7-8 skill slots; you have to make them count.

It was somewhat innovative back in 2005, but now, a secondary profession merely justifies bad builds and exploitive class interaction.

You realize that the similarity is that a player in GW is like a single card in MtG, right?

Anyway, it very much depends whether you get any mileage out of your secondary. For me, my Rangers, Necros and Eles typically don't, my Warriors, Mesmers, and Monks typically do.

Mind blast + Secondary is win.

You might aswell

If you don't want to use skills from the other profession then don't. It just gives you more to choose from.

This is one of the very minor reasons out of the thousands of major ones why Guild Wars is better than many other MMOs.

Death Pact Signet.

Conjures for physical attackers
Plage Touch
Res Spells
Splinter Weapon for Rangers
Mending Touch for Rangers
Earth Elementalists and Mystic Regeneration
Dervishes and Wild Blow

just to name the ones I was just thinking about. It is not only Wammos with Healing Hands and Mending that use secondary professions.

My Necro usually has only Necro skills, other classes tend to mix and match more as seen above. Calling taking advantage of the secondary by default exploitive is blunt and oversimplying, just wrong.

thats what I thought of

That depends upon your version. If you don't have artifacts that make having mana easy then your deck must be balanced for two colors. I think that was their concept. I find that the backend is easier to use for just one or two skills, unless you play a bastard character(such as a MM rit).

You use the secondary to supplement, or make up for, your primary profession's strengths and/or weaknesses. A good example is a warrior; you don't have any real condition or hex removal, but numerous other professions do. Also, as to your point about heavy investment; well, you can max out 2 attributes, but to do more than that you do have to sacrifice maxing it out to get decent levels. Having 1 attribute at 12 (before runes/armor bonuses) and another 2 at 9 or 10 isn't so bad...

Still, there are a pretty good selection of skills unlinked to any attribute as well...

http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Build:A/...Blossom_Farmer
most PvE assassins just kind of sat there and weren't worth the party slot before this

Thumpers
Death pact sig
GOLE

ya know...

Most of the time I tend to use skills from my primary profession. But some well, I have characters that use secondary profession's skills (R/P Packhunter, W/Rt VwK farmer, N/Mo 55, Mo/D 55...).

Or, I use one skill from a different profession (N/Me Echo SS or SV, X/Rt with DPSig, Rebirth on my necro, pretty sure I had to run a A/D for something O_o;;...)

It's definantly innovative, but not as deep as I'd like it to be. Can't say much about other classes, but my Warrior in PvE's secondary just feels like a tiny little helping hand - at least, that's how it used to be. Now I could care less about my secondary profession. I actually wish I could just be a W/.

QFT. Pretty much the only reason I use a secondary on my warrior is for hard rezzes. On my monk it's for e-management (sometimes). Normally my secondary is just for rez.

[skill]Echo[/skill][skill]Arcane Echo[/skill][skill]Mending[/skill]

One major opportunity GW1 missed out on was to have sets of skills particular to certain primary/secondary combinations; having w/n only skills, or mo/rt only skills would have gone a long way to make players feel more individual and versatile. Right now, the only reason to use a combination is for a certain secondary profession skill, and that's it. If a w/n could get "death knight" skills, and a mo/rt could get "divine spiritualist" skills, it would really add a lot more flavor to the game.

thread won
12'd

I agree with Zinger, secondary professions have ruined some classes IMO. For instance, why bother ever taking an assassin into Slavers Exile when all you really need is one skill from the assassin line of skills to beat Duncan. I hope secondary professions are left out of GW2.

Same here. I hope they add more focus on individual professions themselves.